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)

"God help him," she said. "He doesn't have anyone."

A stretcher carried a body out, and she shuffled toward it.

"That's not him," she said, shaking her head.

With the help of others, Diabis clambered over the rubble to what was left of the Imam Hussein Mosque. She crawled over clods of concrete, then a wrought iron fence. She cut her toe on a wire, stopping only for a moment as it began to bleed.

She ignored pleas for her to go further, where other survivors were gathering.

"Don't take me without him," she said. "I don't want you to bring me before him."

Another stretcher passed. "I want to see who they're bringing," she called out. She looked. "No, that's not him, either."

Other survivors followed behind, overtaking her. One was Mehdi al-Hakim and his wife Samiha. They had hid for 18 days.

"This is the first time I've seen the sun," he said. "How could I have left with a war going on around me?"

In the alleys, people carried the weak and the old on their shoulders or cradled them like children. Hezbollah activists helped evacuate 80-year-old Mariam Saghir, her foot crippled, on a ladder turned into a stretcher. One of the activists carried a walkie-talkie, another a pistol. Someone then brought an orange stretcher, propping her head on two bags stuffed with her clothes.

"How much farther?" she pleaded. She rolled to the side, flies gathering on her face. "I want to stay here."

"We're almost there," one of the men reassured her.