August 2, 2006
Heavy Equipment Used to Bury the Dead
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 10:28 a.m. ET
BAALBEK, Lebanon -- People in a village outside this Hezbollah stronghold used a front-end loader to carry away some of the dead Wednesday after a night of Israeli airstrikes and a commando raid inside Baalbek that residents said killed at least 15 civilians.
It was the deepest thrust into Lebanon by Israeli troops since fighting broke out between Israel and Hezbollah on July 12. Israel said its soldiers killed at least 10 Hezbollah guerrillas and captured five.
A crowd of about 50 people from the village of Al Jamaliyeh carried pictures of Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, during a funeral procession through the hamlet, which was hit by bombs overnight as Israeli commandos stormed a Hezbollah hospital in Baalbek a half-mile away.
The village's dead were shrouded in white cloth and carried to the cemetery in the bucket of a backhoe. The mayor, Hussein Jamaleddin, lost his son, brother and five other relatives. He broke down crying and pulled at the limbs of the dead hanging out of the scoop.
''This is the leg of my son. He was a sportsman, he did tae kwan do,'' Jamaleddin wailed. ...
<http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Mideast-Fighting-Baalbek.html>
Carl