Desperate refugees try to flee Lebanon's war zone

TIBNIN, Lebanon -- Nearly all who were hardy enough to endure a four-hour gantlet of shells and gunfire fled the front at Bint Jbail yesterday: pregnant women and others with newborns, elderly women without shoes, children barely old enough to walk.

Those who made it out of the village, where Israeli forces are battling to evict Hezbollah fighters, sought refuge yesterday from one inferno in another -- the overwhelmed, dark, smoke-filled hospital at Tibnin, eight miles from the border and well within range of Israel's artillery.

``Take us out of here!" refugees screamed.

``Have you brought us food? Can you help us?" they said as they mobbed reporters who had traveled to the hospital with a Lebanese Red Cross ambulance.

Their despair summons the full agony of Lebanon's south, a region known for its poverty, its Islamic fervor, and its enduring history of conflict with Israel.

Shi'ites in towns like Bint Jbail, two miles from the Israeli border, and Tibnin, another six miles north, do a bitter double duty.

They contribute ``martyrs" for Hezbollah's fighting force who are memorialized on monuments, captured Israeli mortar tubes, and lacquered oil banners. And when battles break out, they are the ones who die in the greatest numbers.

Two Israeli soldiers and as many as 10 Hezbollah fighters have died in the assault on Bint Jbail, and the last roads into the town were bombed three days ago, leaving room through the rubble only for pedestrians. Few fighting-age males could be seen among the displaced.

The refugees in Tibnin, numbering between 1,350 and 1,600, according to medical officials, are living in some of the most appalling conditions in southern Lebanon. The hospital has no power, there is almost no water for drinking or washing, and families of 10 may share a single can of tuna for a meal.

Israeli guns pounded the hilltop above the hospital yesterday afternoon. A crackling brushfire -- ignited after two Israeli rockets struck a house just below the hospital -- filled the wards with acrid smoke.

Stragglers walked up to the front gate. One elderly woman had walked for four hours without shoes. Blood seeped through bandages binding her feet.

Bint Jbail, a center of anti-Israeli resistance during the 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon that ended in 2000, has been the site in recent days of some of the most bitter fighting in the two-week war.

It is not clear yet what the Israelis have accomplished. The Israel Defense Forces say they have killed dozens of Hezbollah fighters and have taken a hilltop near the town, but are not yet in control. The refugees describe a village in ruins, even though Hezbollah says the town has not fallen.

Hussein Shaami says his backyard is now a deep bomb crater. His nerves were shot, his eyes were fixed wide open in desperation, as he bounced back and forth between the Tibnin hospital and the Red Cross volunteers squatting in an unfinished concrete structure, begging for help.

``I've left my father in Bint Jbail. The Red Cross won't take him. No one will take him," he said. ``I came here to find a way to help him."

Hala Abou Alaiwy, 35, walked the six miles to Tibnin yesterday morning in the blouse she usually wears to work as a dentist's secretary. She had left everything behind in Bint Jbail, including her mother, who was too old to brave the hike.

Almost everyone remaining in Bint Jbail -- just over 1,000 people, according to the refugees -- was too poor to flee by car when the roads were still open, or was too old or sick to walk out when the battle started.

Alaiwy said she has no car and could not afford taxi fare out of town.

``There were so many bombs I couldn't count," Alaiwy said. The walk took four hours. Missiles hit on either side of her. ``I was saved by the hands of God," she said.

She scribbled the cellphone number of her boss, the dentist, who had fled days ago to the relative safety of Beirut, and pleaded for a reporter to contact him: ``Please, can you help me get my mother out?"

According to hospital officials in Tibnin, five women have given birth prematurely in the hospital. The Red Cross, with just a few functional ambulances, can transport only the most severe cases out of Tibnin. Yesterday, the town's entire fleet was out of commission; one of the ambulances was bombed Sunday night, and the rest had broken down from bouncing over shrapnel-studded roads and bomb-cratered detours.

In the basement of the hospital, families squatted along the corridors, on the bathroom floor, and in the kitchen now bereft of any food.

The hospital removed all its medical equipment and closed for renovations before war broke out. It has opened its doors to refugees with almost no supplies.

The Red Cross operates out of a construction site next door; its volunteer paramedics yesterday smoked apple-flavored tobacco from nargilas, or water pipes, indifferent to the shells that thudded to the ground just a few yards away and set aflame a Lebanese diamond dealer's mansion atop the hill.

Whenever Red Cross ambulances make it in from Tyre, they bring a few hundred pieces of flat bread and a hundred cans of tuna. Yesterday, by the light of a candle, a father spread a single piece of processed cheese on three pieces of flimsy pita, to share with his entire extended family. That was the family's daily meal.

The desolate roads stretching north and west of Tibnin lead away from the front line of the invading Israeli force.

But they still bear the scars of an air war that hasn't spared a single town in the border region.

The hilly 20-mile trip to Tibnin from Tyre, on the coast, usually takes about half an hour, when there is no conflict.

Now it takes twice that, even for those driving at top speeds over the completely abandoned roads, because of the extensive detours through fields and valleys required to circumvent the obstacle course of craters, building rubble, and destroyed cars.

Signs still line the road south from Tyre advertising a book fair in Bint Jbail, organized by an Islamic school. It was supposed to run through Aug. 10.

All makes of cars can be seen twisted by bombs, abandoned on the side of the road, burned, or crashed next to missile strike sites.

A few nervous residents waited out the bombing in Qana, halfway between Tyre and Tibnin, scene of a 1996 attack in which 106 Lebanese civilians were killed by Israeli shelling while taking shelter in a United Nations compound.

Amina Aydibi, 30, trembled inside her dry-goods shop as a pair of Israeli fighter jets roared past the town center, low enough so that the missiles under their wings were clearly visible. She said her family fled for a day when Israel ordered civilians to leave south Lebanon, but came back because they felt cowardly.

But the worst fighting rages closer to the border, in Bint Jbail. Tamara Husseini Yassin, a 15-year-old from Beirut, was vacationing at her grandmother's house there, enjoying the cooler mountain weather, when the war broke out. Her family was trapped there until three days ago, when a group of eight children and four adults walked to Tibnin.

Now they live in the hospital basement, staying underground because it feels more protected from the bombs. Tibnin feels safer, Yassin said, with a steady smile even as explosions and popping fire below the hospital made adults around her flinch.

Bint Jbail ``was like a ghost village," she said. ``All the people are afraid. They bomb and bomb."