Bodies Pulled From Wreckage in Lebanon

A man looks at the bodies of Lebanese victims, recovered from the rubble of a demolished building that was struck by Israeli war plane missiles at the village of Qana, after being prepared to be sent to the morgue at the Tyre Government Hospital in the southern Lebanon city of Tyre, Sunday, July 30, 2006. Dozens of civilians, including at least 20 children, were killed Sunday in an Israeli airstrike that flattened houses in this southern Lebanon village _ the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser) (Nasser Nasser - AP)

Khalil had been in a nearby house when the missile hit.

"It came in right at the door. I saw it. It was aimed right for the door," he said. He said planes were still firing afterward, preventing him and others from rushing to the wreckage in the night.

"In this village, there are so few places to hide that we just go into one or two houses and sit together. It is like a shelter," he said.

Jradi said he got the call to rush to Qana from Tyre. But he couldn't go immediately, with Israeli warplanes still overhead. "It was too dangerous," he said. Through the morning, workers dug with their hands before heavy machinery arrived in the afternoon to search for bodies deeper within the wreckage.

The dead were carried out in blankets, sheets and carpets. The eldest was a 95-year-old man, a Shalhoub _ the youngest a 9-month-old child of the Hashems.

The arm of a child slipped from beneath the dirty gray blanket that covered him. On the same stretcher, toes painted with bright red polish peeked out. A rescue worker lifted the blanket to show two shattered children who were curled up looking asleep except for the thick dried blood at their noses.

Like in many villages of the south, support for Hezbollah guerrillas is strong in Qana, nine miles from the Israeli border.

Hezbollah flags were placed on some of the bombed out buildings. From his hospital bed in Tyre, Mohammed Ali Shalhoub said that from their graves, his wife and children "were all saying God bless Sheik Hassan Nasrallah," the Hezbollah leader.

In Qana, resident Mohammed Ismail waved at seven dead lined up on the ground, saying President Bush "laughs when they ask him about the dead bodies."

One elderly man from the Shalhoub family walked shakily for several steps, then collapsed crying in the arms of an ambulance worker.

"Why? I don't know why. I love my God, my family, nothing else, and for that I should be killed?"