In Qana, A Gruesome Scene (L.A. Times)

[kurth]

In Qana, A Gruesome Scene
By Megan K. Stack, Times Staff Writer
8:15 PM PDT, July 30, 2006

QANA, Lebanon -- ... Across the hospital room, Zeinab Ahmed Shalhoub nodded silently. The woman's face was wan; skin papery; eyes hollow. She gripped her bed sheet tight to her chin and told her story in the flat voice of a person shocked beyond emotion. Bombs had rattled the valleys when she stretched out on a mattress with her two little girls. She had to sleep, she decided, missiles or no missiles. As she drifted off, the 24-year-old mother rolled away from 18-month-old Zeinab and 3-year-old Rokaya. She felt their warm breath on her neck.

When the bomb crashed into the house, she thought it had hit a neighbor's place. Then she realized her mouth was full of dust, and she couldn't move under a heavy crush of rubble. Her daughters whimpered in her ear, but she couldn't reach back to touch them. Shalhoub doesn't know how much time dragged past as she lay face-down in the dirt, listening as death overtook her only children. "I heard my baby girl moaning in my ear," she said, holding one listless hand alongside her ear to show where the child had lain. "They were all covered with the dust, and they died," Shalhoub said. "I couldn't scream."

It was her sister who finally saved her. The younger woman extricated herself from the broken house, hauled herself over to her sister and pulled her to safety. By that time, Shalhoub had convinced herself that her 18-month-old baby was still alive. The child was still warm; she was sure of it. "Get my baby," she urged her sister. She was hallucinating. The tiny corpse was stone cold... Rescuers said they believe many of the victims had died slowly through the long night of bombs, their faces pinned to the dirt. The bombs had kept ambulances away until daybreak. Even then, a bomb fell a soccer-field's length from the first vehicle to arrive...

"This is the most horrible thing I've seen," said Red Cross volunteer Mohammed Zaatar. "It's small babies. You scratch in the earth nothing, nothing, nothing," Zaatar said. "You follow your senses. When you feel a body underground, something shakes you. It's a life, it's a man, it's a woman." A page torn from a child's coloring book lay tattered on the ground, scrawled over with strokes of sunny yellow and bright blue. A diaper was discarded. Ambulances were crammed with dead children...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-qana31jul31,0,301525.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[GAPeace]

1. The LA Times has really been working overtime lately

They've been doing the kind of decent coverage the NY Times has snubbed to death.

[leftchick]

2. "It was a mistake"

"with US Made precision guided bombs" so sorry. :puke:

[Erika]

4. Yes, We fund and support the Isreali military

We share totally in this shame.

[TomInTib]

3. Here are a few for the Family Photo Album (may be slightly unsettling)

http://fromisraeltolebanon.info/

[flyarm]

5. ahhh my heart is broken..i do not know how a mother ever moves forward

i would have to be put into a straight jacket..

i just don't understand how anyone could excuse this..its beyond me...

just totally beyond my comprehension..

bless the children...and their mommies and daddy's

fly




Bless the beasts and the children

For in this world they have no voice

They have no choice



Bless the beasts and the children

For the world can never be

The world they see



(*) Light their way

When the darkness surrounds them

Give them love

Let it shine all around them



(**) Bless the beasts and the children

Give them shelter from a storm

Keep them safe

Keep them warm

[UndertheOcean]

6. What you are seeing is "How to make suicide bombrers 101". n/t

n/t

[hopeisaplace]

7. lots of tears ...love this song, Bless The Beasts and The Children

today in the front of my mind, and in the back of my mind
have been the suffering families, their babies, their children,
...as we speak some are dying, some are hungry and thirsty, and
I go to my fridge to get something, with this on my mind.
It's sadness that is with me even when I'm laughing or smiling
about something else unrelated. My gawd.


edit: typo

[Bucky]

9. Yeh, I can't imagine this either. The life would go out of me.

I would hate whoever did this. I would spend the rest of my life trying to hurt them. I mean, I'd like to think I wouldn't, but I kinda think I would. When you think about them as human beings, it's kind of hard to just turn your feelings off. I wish they could just be "collaterals" in my mind as well.

[countryjake]

14. "Bless the beasts and the children"

thank you for posting that

[Pirate Smile]

8. The entire article is horrifying. They died slowly.

""Every day is a disaster here," he muttered as he turned back to the corridor. "America is sending the best of its bombs to Israel."

The families had come to live here on the outskirts of Qana because they were afraid to stay in their one-story houses, survivors and neighbors said. Like many families, they did not want to leave, despite the warnings to flee; they thought the war would not last long.

-snip-
He saw a 7-year-old girl sprawled on the wreckage. He thought she was asleep -- then he noticed that her eyes were open, and still. He scooped her body up in his arms and carried her out. That was the beginning of a daylong hunt for bodies.
"Let America know," Ismael said, "that from now on, if a kid is 1 year old, we'll teach him how to fight America and fight Israel."

-snip-
Rescuers said they believed many of the victims had died slowly through the long night of bombs, their faces pinned to the dirt. The bombs had kept ambulances away until daybreak. Even then, a bomb fell a soccer-field's length from the first vehicle to arrive."

[The_Casual_Observer]

10. Meanwhile this whole mess exposes the fact that Israel

is a vulnerable as any shit place could be. These guys will make life miserable for them from now on.

[flyarm]

12. right now i feel deservedly so!

not the people of isreal..i think they are very much like us...but of all who run that government and ours as well..i hope they suffer..but i wonder..do the monsters ever suffer..or only the children and innocents?

i am just left to wonder ...

i have never in 54 years felt such disgust for our countries leaders ..except maybe when Mai lei was exposed..and the gulf of tonkin..was exposed..

but i was young then..now as a mother..i am even more disgusted..have we learned nothing in all these years??
the only thing i see all around me is apathy!

and that really disgusts me!

fly
bless the children.......

[hopeisaplace]

13. yes, I feel your anguish, and the apathy is pretty hard to take

very hard to take..

I do have to say that CNN (that's the only international news I really follow)...
have been better lately at least at exposing what really is going on regarding the
suffering innocent people. I don't remember any M$M outlet showing as much "horror"
as I've seen lately, in years past. It's necessary for this truth to be really visible to average
people, so people are able to truly understand that war is a burning-all-consuming
hell. At least I'm hoping this will "wake up" the apathetic, *crossing fingers*.

My heart goes out to the mother in this article. I send her and others who are suffering,
hugs, tight hugs.

[MoseyWalker]

11. I will never

be able to get the images of the dead out of my mind.

We have seen far too many dead bodies over the past few years. I, for one, will never get used to it - or be "desensitized" to it.

[mom cat]

15. Too many stories just like this. Call your comgress critters and the

White House.And then, keep calling. It is time that those we elected know that we strongly oppose this massacre.