Survivors Rise From Rubble Of Battered Lebanese Village

Namad Baidoun, traumatized by 20 days of Israeli bombing, screams as she walks out of the shattered ruins of her village of Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon. (Photos By Michael Robinson Chavez -- The Washington Post)

Red Cross ambulances tried to enter the city around 11 a.m. At first, there were few signs of life in the devastated alleys, then slowly, figures, almost like specters, began crawling out of the homes.

"This is my house here," said Amin Ayyoub, a 77-year-old resident, who trudged up a hill.

He pointed at a stone building that he said was 50 years old. Rubble was piled in the doorway, leaving a three-foot high entrance. Next to it was a car with two chunks of asphalt on its trunk. "God protect me," he said, gazing at it. "God take care of me."

He led Red Cross workers down the street, trying to rescue elderly residents still hiding, most too frightened by the fighting to leave.

"Someone's down there," he said, pointing wildly. "She's all alone."

A worker emerged from the basement with Mariam Sharara cradled in his arms. In her eighties, maybe older, she was blind, so dehydrated after 20 days of hiding that she could hardly move. They set her against a wall, and she slumped to her side, listless.

"Is there anyone else in there?" a worker asked Ayyoub.

He gestured, and they went deeper into the alley, climbing over rubble as they looked for others.

Coming up the hill was Zeinab Diabis, with two other women. In a blue floral veil and a blue and white dress, she didn't know her age. Hunched over, she felt her way forward with her hands, crusted with dirt. Her story was like others told Monday: as many as 20 days in the dark, with too little food, dirty water, the respites rare between the bombings. Some said they had gone to as many as seven different basements seeking shelter. Most were too poor, old or scared to try to flee the city.

"We couldn't eat," she said. "We went without food for so long. We survived on a small piece of dry bread."

Red Cross workers were overwhelmed with the search, and had to leave Diabis behind, in the road. Even after they had gone, she kept pleading for help in finding her younger brother, Ahmed, still trapped in a home she had shared with him for 30 years. She had checked on him before she left, telling him she would come back with help. She could crawl if she had to, she said; blind, he couldn't.

"He's in the house, he's by himself," she said, pointing to the street below. "It's a pity. There's no one there for him."