Beirut empties in joyous return south

Beirut emptied itself into the liberated south yesterday. Half a million people took to their cars and drove to villages they dared not visit for two decades.

Schoolchildren skipped their lessons, workers took leave ahead of today's declared national holiday. The normally traffic-snarled streets of the capital were empty.

President Emile Lahoud toured the freed areas - 10 per cent of the territory of Lebanon. A pack of politicians and would-be politicians followed him.

Everyone moved freely. The checkpoints were gone. As Mr Timor Goksel, the UN spokesman, said: "It's a whole new ballgame."

The people of the south welcomed relatives and tourists by throwing handfuls of rice and rose petals, offering coffee and sweets, hugs and kisses. Swarms of people picnicked in fields bleached golden by the sun.

Lebanese television broadcast day-long live coverage of encounters between family members who had not met in 10 or 20 years. Cameras were on hand for the takeover of the house owned by Gen Antoine Lahad, the commander of Israel's surrogate South Lebanon Army militia, in the largely Christian town of Merjayoun.

While Israel's forces appeared to depart in a hasty, haphazard fashion, the Lebanese planned long and hard for the day of liberation. Shia militiamen belonging to the Hizbullah and Amal movements did not enter Christian villages.

Muslim clerics and Christian bishops were asked to reassure their flocks that there would be no revenge attacks. "No shots were fired, no one was even slapped," remarked Mr Marwan Shukri, of the Ministry of Information.

"We Lebanese are deeply attached to our land," he said. "There's a whole generation which has never seen this area. Refugees from the south just could not wait to visit their home towns and villages once again."

But the wary Lebanese, shocked by Israel's stunning retreat, know that they are not yet "safe and sound". While civilians celebrated, bearded Hizbullah militiamen glared at crew-cut Israeli soldiers through the wire strands of the "Good Fence".