Fisk: What do you say to a man whose family is buried under the rubble?
Independent
There were bulldozers turning over the tons of rubble, a cloud of dust and smoke a mile high over the smashed slums of Beirut's southern suburbs and a tall man in a grey T-shirt - a Brooklyn taxi driver, no less - standing on the verge of tears, staring at what may well be the grave of his grandfather, his uncle and aunt. Half the family home had been torn away and the entire block of civilian apartments next door had been smashed to the ground a few hours earlier by the two missiles that exploded in Asaad al-Assad Street.
What do you say to a man whose family is buried under the rubble? The last corpse had been a man whose face appeared etched in dust before the muck was removed and he turned out to be paper-thin - so perfectly had the falling concrete crushed him. Mohamed al-Husseini had left New York for a holiday with his young wife and infant child - they were safe in the centre of Beirut - because he wanted to see his family home and talk to the relatives he grew up with.
"Just look what the Israelis have done," he said, not taking his eyes off the floors of the apartments, now scarcely an inch between them. "I am confused. You know? I don't know what to do. I could go back to my wife and kid but the rest of my family is in there. They used to live in the south and they survived there. Then they come to Beirut and die here."
Mohamed al-Husseini's grandfather, Mohamed Yassin, is - let us not say "was" yet - 75. His uncle is Hussein Yassin, his aunt is called Hila. By last night, nothing had been found of them. And of those in the building next door?
At least 17 civilians were killed, many of them children. A 12-year-old boy called Hussein Ahmed Mohsen lay dead in the mortuary of the Mount Lebanon Hospital, along with a woman who died just after being rescued when the missiles collapsed her home just after 7.30 on Monday night. Almost all the occupants of this doomed building were members of the Rmeiti family - again, they were from the dangerous south - and 15 of the dead were from the same village. Read more
There were bulldozers turning over the tons of rubble, a cloud of dust and smoke a mile high over the smashed slums of Beirut's southern suburbs and a tall man in a grey T-shirt - a Brooklyn taxi driver, no less - standing on the verge of tears, staring at what may well be the grave of his grandfather, his uncle and aunt. Half the family home had been torn away and the entire block of civilian apartments next door had been smashed to the ground a few hours earlier by the two missiles that exploded in Asaad al-Assad Street.
What do you say to a man whose family is buried under the rubble? The last corpse had been a man whose face appeared etched in dust before the muck was removed and he turned out to be paper-thin - so perfectly had the falling concrete crushed him. Mohamed al-Husseini had left New York for a holiday with his young wife and infant child - they were safe in the centre of Beirut - because he wanted to see his family home and talk to the relatives he grew up with.
"Just look what the Israelis have done," he said, not taking his eyes off the floors of the apartments, now scarcely an inch between them. "I am confused. You know? I don't know what to do. I could go back to my wife and kid but the rest of my family is in there. They used to live in the south and they survived there. Then they come to Beirut and die here."
Mohamed al-Husseini's grandfather, Mohamed Yassin, is - let us not say "was" yet - 75. His uncle is Hussein Yassin, his aunt is called Hila. By last night, nothing had been found of them. And of those in the building next door?
At least 17 civilians were killed, many of them children. A 12-year-old boy called Hussein Ahmed Mohsen lay dead in the mortuary of the Mount Lebanon Hospital, along with a woman who died just after being rescued when the missiles collapsed her home just after 7.30 on Monday night. Almost all the occupants of this doomed building were members of the Rmeiti family - again, they were from the dangerous south - and 15 of the dead were from the same village. Read more
posted by exoplanet at 11:22 AM
<< Home