Lebanese Father Mourns Loss of Family

Lebanese Khamel Ali Abdallah, 36, holds his six-year-old daughter Lara in his lap in the village of Marwaheen, southern Lebanon, Friday, Aug. 25, 2006. Lara was one of only four people to survive a July 15 Israeli attack on a convoy of Lebanese who were trying to flee fighting between Hezbollah guerrillas and Israel. Abdallah lost his wife and five of his children, all but Lara, in the attack. Early in the war, the Israeli army warned villagers here to get out of the battle zone. Panicky people sought refuge at a nearby U.N. post, but were turned away, leaving many skeptical about expanding the peacekeeping force to help police the truce. (AP Photo/Todd Pitman) (Todd Pitman - AP)

MARWAHEEN, Lebanon -- Last month, Khamel Ali Abdallah kissed his wife and six children goodbye, then put them on a bus to his native village in south Lebanon for summer vacation. He was supposed to join them a week later, but war between Hezbollah and Israel broke out.

He would see only one of them again.

The day after Abdallah's family arrived in Marwaheen, a small hilltop village a stone's throw from the Israeli border, Israel unleashed a barrage of artillery and airstrikes that reached Lebanon's glittering Mediterranean capital of Beirut and beyond.

The assault tore giant craters into roads across the country, making it too dangerous for Abdallah to leave Beirut. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of charred cars still line the roads of war-wrecked towns, more than two weeks after a U.N. cease-fire ended the fighting, provoked by Hezbollah's July 12 capture of two Israeli soldiers.

Abdallah, 36, who holds jobs as a security guard and a coffee server at a communications company, called his wife in Marwaheen three times a day for the first three days of the war.

"She kept telling me 'Beirut is dangerous, it's being bombed, be careful,'" Abdallah said. "I told her 'I'll be fine, take care of yourself.'"

On the fourth day of fighting, he called at 7:30 a.m. "She told me 'We are fine,'" Abdallah said, and he felt reassured.

He called back an hour later. This time there was no answer.

Abdallah managed to reach a brother in nearby Sidon on the phone, who told him he'd heard the family had fled Marwaheen after Israeli forces ordered residents via loudspeakers to evacuate within two hours.

The panicked family had rushed to the local U.N. headquarters and begged U.N. peacekeepers to protect them. The peacekeepers turned them away, and the group decided the only way out was to risk Lebanon's deadly roads.

"There was a fire burning inside me. I couldn't think. I could only worry," Abdallah said of the uncertain hours that followed.

Glued to the television in his Beirut apartment, he saw a report about a convoy carrying civilians trying to flee Marwaheen that had been hit by an Israeli airstrike. More than a dozen were said to be dead.