By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 21, 2006; A01

TYRE, Lebanon, July 20 -- The warning came in the morning Thursday, a recorded message dialed to phone numbers in southern Lebanon. In flawless Arabic, it instructed: Leave now, beyond the Litani River that bisects the rock-studded wadis of the south. Don't flee on motorcycles or in vans or trucks. Otherwise, you will be a target. The message signed off simply: the state of Israel.

But leaving this southern Lebanese city Thursday was more complicated than a choice. Aid officials say that tens of thousands have already fled Tyre and its environs along the Mediterranean Sea but that perhaps 12,000 Lebanese remain stranded. The wartime circumstances of a besieged city keep them here: no gasoline for their cars, no money for taxi fares that have surged 75-fold, no faith in assurances from Israeli forces that have repeatedly attacked civilian vehicles and, most desperately, no hope of finding safety.

"We're just left here to die," said Maher Yassin, standing across from Tyre's harbor and wearing a shirt that read, "Mortal."

The plight of Tyre's people is the story of the latest Arab-Israeli conflict writ small: In nine days of attacks that Israel says have targeted the infrastructure of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Lebanon's civilians have suffered inordinately, with more than 300 dead, many times that number wounded and 500,000 displaced. As this city awaits the brunt of an Israeli attack that most think is imminent, resignation, hopelessness, occasional defiance and a sense of abandonment course through the beleaguered population.

"They evacuate the foreigners, bring them to safety, and they leave us like dogs in the street," said Therese Khairallah, sitting with friends in an alley near the seashore. "A small mistake turned into this mountain of a disaster, and we're the victims."

She shook her head, on a day when attacks had waned, more breather than respite. "God knows what's ahead."

God comes up often in conversations these days in Tyre, where residents trade rumors about when Israel will unleash an even worse attack, whether its troops will invade, whether the conflict will last one week, two weeks or perhaps far longer.

"We'll not go," insisted Ahmed Mroueh, the director of Jabal Amel Hospital. He repeated the words, perhaps to reassure himself. "What else can you do? There's just no alternative. Can we leave the wounded and run away? We have to keep working."

Mroueh flipped through the handwritten ledger on his desk listing the 228 wounded his hospital has treated since fighting began.

"Look at this," he said, running down the list.

"One 11 years old, one 5 years old, one 4 years old." He stopped, just briefly. "This is a 3-month-old." Each was highlighted in yellow to denote a death. "We have not received one injured, not one dead, who's not a civilian."

Jabal Amel Hospital sits next to a bomb site where missiles destroyed three villas four days ago. Doctors at the hospital said eight children, their mother and her sister were buried in the attack. One building was flattened, rubble strewn about as in an archaeological dig; the others were in various stages of destruction. Part of a red-tiled roof was intact; the rest suggested the aftermath of a tornado.

On the other side of the hospital, 13 Red Cross ambulances pulled up in the late afternoon to evacuate 20 wounded people to Beirut. Volunteers in orange overalls and white helmets emblazoned with a cross moved quickly in and out, carrying the injured. As the ambulances departed, blue lights flashed on top, their sirens sounding a tinny wail. They drove in batches of three, four, sometimes more; the roads were too dangerous for all to go at once. Each sped out of the parking lot. These days in Lebanon, fast is the only speed on the roads.

As the Red Cross volunteers worked, a Civil Defense station wagon careered into the parking lot, carrying 32-year-old Ibrahim Saksouk, whose lower right leg was a pulp of bloodied and burned flesh. An Israeli rocket struck his car Thursday outside Qana, to the east of Tyre.

"Move! Move!" his 32-year-old brother, Haitham, yelled, helping carry him in. "Make way!"

Haitham wiped his bloody hands on his pants. "When you enter any road, you don't know if you'll ever leave it," he said.

Physician Bassam Mtarik said that with just eight ventilators, the 125-bed hospital wanted the Red Cross to free up as much space as possible for an anticipated surge in patients. He predicted supplies would last a week, no more.

"We're worried about what's ahead," he said matter-of-factly.

Mtarik had arrived in Tyre from Sidon on Monday morning, bringing with him 52 units of blood. He has been here since.

"And I'm not leaving until this is over," he said.

Mtarik walked into the hospital's basement, tinged with the smell of too many people sharing too small a space.

"These are civilians," he said, waving his hand.

Along the hallway were family after family, perhaps 90 people in all, on mattresses and blankets or milling about. Plastic sacks bulged with clothes. Bread was stacked nearby, and bottles of water lined the wall. Trash cans overflowed. The families had all come to the hospital over the past week, seeking shelter. Stranded by circumstance, none had the means to leave.

"The only thing we need is for them to stop the fighting and let us go to Beirut," said Hussein Shihab, 60, who had come from the village of Aitait with his wife, four daughters, son and five grandchildren. "Just let us get our children out of here."

The cars they came in, a BMW and Oldsmobile, had no fuel. He had no money left.

"We're like meat at the butcher shop," he said, shaking his hands. "Who can endure this? They are crushing our spirit."

There were a few televisions at the hospital, but virtually everyone relied on radios, always turned on. Rumors swirled: The lull Thursday was a preamble.

"They say they're hitting Hezbollah, but they're hitting the people. They're hitting the children," said Hussein Yaacoub, who fled his border village of Houla on Saturday. He grabbed the shoulder of his 5-year-old son, Mohammed. "Is he Hezbollah?"

"Ask President Bush what's going to happen. Ask Condoleezza Rice. They should tell us what's ahead for us," he said.

In parts of the region, Israeli aircraft have dropped leaflets warning that any trucks traveling south of the Litani River would be suspected of carrying weapons and could be targeted. An Israeli radio station near the border urged Lebanese to flee, and the recorded telephone messages began Wednesday.

The response has been fear and flight. In the distance, off the coast of Tyre, was a cruise liner taking 600 people -- foreigners and U.N. staff members' families -- to the island of Cyprus.

"This city's going to be destroyed," said Sabrine Shabbash, a 19-year-old Swedish national waiting to depart on an orange dinghy for the ship. She stood with her fiance, 27-year-old Ahmed Zeid, her parents and her four brothers and sisters. They carried only enough clothes to fit into a single yellow shopping bag.

"Look," Shabbash said, as a blast threw up a plume of gray smoke across the harbor, the sound of the explosion smothering the call to prayer.

Near the dock, an organizer called out names: "Ali Jaafar." "Afif Wadie." "Dalia Sbatiya."

When the evacuation ended, at around 3 p.m., two U.N. armored personnel carriers blocked the blue gate to the port.

Across the street stood 18-year-old Abbas Muhanna.

"Why is it that the people of the south -- the women and the children -- die? And the foreigners are the only ones who can leave? What about the Lebanese?" Muhanna asked. "Why the foreigners and not us?" His friend Mohammed Aidibi, 20, jumped in. "The Lebanese aren't considered people," he said. "Foreigners are the only ones who have the right to live."

On the road outside the city, three young men loitered in front of a row of shuttered shops. They had no money. Even if they did, they probably couldn't afford the taxi fare to Beirut, which had gone from 2,000 Lebanese pounds ($1.33) to 50,000, sometimes 150,000($99.50).

"If I had enough money, I would have left a long time ago," said Haitham Akkasha, who worked on a banana plantation.

The three chatted about the pall cast over a paralyzed city. And they kept waiting for a car that might give them a ride for free. After two hours, they suspected they wouldn't find one.

"It's going to be like Iraq here," Akkasha said finally, "complete destruction."

His friend, Hamza Mahmoud, smiled, a grin that suggested a hopeless resignation.

"It's going to be worse than Iraq," he said.