OMEN
07-15-2006, 09:58 PM
ELEVEN children and seven adults were killed overnight in southern Lebanon, their bodies consumed by flames when an Israeli warplane opened fire on the convoy they were in, UN peacekeepers and hospital sources said.
Their charred remains were extracted from the wreckage of the minibus and car they were travelling in and taken to hospital.
A doctor, Ali Zeineddine, said they were burned alive.
"It is very difficult to identify the bodies or to distinguish between girls or boys, as the 18 victims perished from the fire triggered by incendiary shells. They grilled," he said.
They had been among residents fleeing villages close to the Israeli border and were killed when missiles struck a car and a minibus near Shamaa, hospital sources said. The children were aged between 7 and 12.
An officer with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), who was involved in the evacuation operation, told AFP that his team removed most of the burnt bodies."Some of them were thrown on olive trees and even on haystacks," said the officer, who declined to be named.
An AFP correspondent saw the blackened bodies of five of those killed, a father and his four children, at the hospital in Tyre.
The father of two of the other children killed, Mahmoud Ghannam, 55, who was not with the targeted convoy, broke down when he arrived at the hospital.
"My God, my God. I can't make out the faces of my children. They are burnt black... Which ones are my children?" he cried, repeatedly hitting his head with his hands.
"My God, Israel is the enemy of mankind," he wailed.
Ten other people were transported to hospital for treatment for burns and fractures, medics said.
Initial reports had put the number of children killed at nine and said the missiles had been fired by an Israeli helicopter gunship.
One of the survivors, nine-year-old Batoul Aatrissi, said from her hospital bed: "There was a plane over our heads. My father parked on the side of the road. There was an explosion, the car was picked up and knocked over and we were thrown around the place."
Her 13-year-old cousin Sadeq, badly peppered with shrapnel, added: "I remember only one thing, finding myself alone in the car with its wheels in the air. I called out but there was nobody. Then I found myself here."
The deaths of the 18 in the convoy contributed to a total of 30 civilians killed in a series of Israeli raids across Lebanon on Saturday. Another 45 people were wounded.
A Lebanese army soldier was also killed in an Israeli military strike on the coastal city of Batroun, north of Beirut.
At least 92 civilians have been killed and 252 wounded in Lebanon since Israel began its assault on Lebanon after the capture of two soldiers and the killing of eight others by the Syrian-backed militant group Hezbollah early Wednesday.
The Israeli army said it regretted the deaths of civilians, but said Hezbollah militias were to blame for putting their lives in danger.
It said in a statement that it had targeted the area near Tyre because it was "used as launching grounds for missiles fired by Hezbollah terror organisation at Israel".
"The IDF (Israeli Defence Force) regrets civilian casualties while targeting the missile launching area," it said.
"Responsibility for endangering the civilian population rests on the organisation which operates and launches missiles at Israel from populated civilian areas," the army said.
Guerrillas have fired over 100 rockets from Lebanon into northern Israel over the past three days, killing four Israeli civilians.
Three people were also killed in another raid Saturday when Israeli jets struck the road leading to the main crossing of Masnaa between Lebanon and Syria, blocking passage across the border, police said.
And another three civilians were killed when Israeli jets fired missiles near a bridge on the outskirts of the northeastern town of Hermel on the border with Syria.
An Iraqi was killed and three other workers were wounded in an attack at a fuel station near the southern coastal city of Sidon, police said.
Agence France-Presse
Their charred remains were extracted from the wreckage of the minibus and car they were travelling in and taken to hospital.
A doctor, Ali Zeineddine, said they were burned alive.
"It is very difficult to identify the bodies or to distinguish between girls or boys, as the 18 victims perished from the fire triggered by incendiary shells. They grilled," he said.
They had been among residents fleeing villages close to the Israeli border and were killed when missiles struck a car and a minibus near Shamaa, hospital sources said. The children were aged between 7 and 12.
An officer with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), who was involved in the evacuation operation, told AFP that his team removed most of the burnt bodies."Some of them were thrown on olive trees and even on haystacks," said the officer, who declined to be named.
An AFP correspondent saw the blackened bodies of five of those killed, a father and his four children, at the hospital in Tyre.
The father of two of the other children killed, Mahmoud Ghannam, 55, who was not with the targeted convoy, broke down when he arrived at the hospital.
"My God, my God. I can't make out the faces of my children. They are burnt black... Which ones are my children?" he cried, repeatedly hitting his head with his hands.
"My God, Israel is the enemy of mankind," he wailed.
Ten other people were transported to hospital for treatment for burns and fractures, medics said.
Initial reports had put the number of children killed at nine and said the missiles had been fired by an Israeli helicopter gunship.
One of the survivors, nine-year-old Batoul Aatrissi, said from her hospital bed: "There was a plane over our heads. My father parked on the side of the road. There was an explosion, the car was picked up and knocked over and we were thrown around the place."
Her 13-year-old cousin Sadeq, badly peppered with shrapnel, added: "I remember only one thing, finding myself alone in the car with its wheels in the air. I called out but there was nobody. Then I found myself here."
The deaths of the 18 in the convoy contributed to a total of 30 civilians killed in a series of Israeli raids across Lebanon on Saturday. Another 45 people were wounded.
A Lebanese army soldier was also killed in an Israeli military strike on the coastal city of Batroun, north of Beirut.
At least 92 civilians have been killed and 252 wounded in Lebanon since Israel began its assault on Lebanon after the capture of two soldiers and the killing of eight others by the Syrian-backed militant group Hezbollah early Wednesday.
The Israeli army said it regretted the deaths of civilians, but said Hezbollah militias were to blame for putting their lives in danger.
It said in a statement that it had targeted the area near Tyre because it was "used as launching grounds for missiles fired by Hezbollah terror organisation at Israel".
"The IDF (Israeli Defence Force) regrets civilian casualties while targeting the missile launching area," it said.
"Responsibility for endangering the civilian population rests on the organisation which operates and launches missiles at Israel from populated civilian areas," the army said.
Guerrillas have fired over 100 rockets from Lebanon into northern Israel over the past three days, killing four Israeli civilians.
Three people were also killed in another raid Saturday when Israeli jets struck the road leading to the main crossing of Masnaa between Lebanon and Syria, blocking passage across the border, police said.
And another three civilians were killed when Israeli jets fired missiles near a bridge on the outskirts of the northeastern town of Hermel on the border with Syria.
An Iraqi was killed and three other workers were wounded in an attack at a fuel station near the southern coastal city of Sidon, police said.
Agence France-Presse