MIDDLE EAST: The three Syrian guest-workers arrived before dawn yesterday, as they did every morning, to set up their coffee stall beneath the flyover, hoping to catch the breakfast trade from early risers in the southern suburbs of Beirut. That was when the bomb blew them away, along with a large section of the road above their heads. Nobody seemed to remember their names.
Kaseem Moqdad, who lives nearby, had woken in darkness to the sound of jets overhead. By the time the overpass was bombed he was out in the street in a crowd of people, looking up at the sky. In addition to those killed, he said, 20 people were injured by flying glass and rubble.
A former corporal in the British Royal Fusiliers, Mr Moqdad had been back in his native Lebanon for only a year and a half, and Israel's assault on its capital left him with a sense of torn loyalties. "I don't like Hizbullah and I don't hate Hizbullah," he said, in an accent that was half Lebanese, half north London. "We have to fix why people get mad, and we're not treating the cause . . . you do get angry with the West. The Israelis don't see that they kill children and women and innocent people."
The Israeli rockets and bombs that struck southern Beirut yesterday appear to have hit their intended targets, mainly roads. One landed in the middle of a crossroads, blasting a huge crater and thrusting twisted underground pipework up into the air.
Most of the roads in question, though, are yards away from shops and homes. In the Shia neighbourhoods where the damage was worst some residents sought to salvage what they could, while others just gaped, looking shellshocked.
A mass exodus from the capital, mainly of young families, was gathering pace, but the options for escape from Lebanon were evaporating. Three days of Israeli attacks have left the capital's airport bombed and shut down, its sea routes blockaded by warships, and the main highway into Syria impassable. Air attacks have left 53 people dead so far, as part of an Israeli campaign to win the release of two soldiers captured by Hizbullah militants in cross-border raids on Wednesday. Hizbullah's counter-assault continued yesterday, with dozens of rockets reaching into northern Israel, and deep into the Israeli psyche.
On both sides of the border the crisis that has engulfed the region in recent days has fuelled a powerful sense of deja vu. For the Beirut residents who spent the day frantically hoarding food, candles, batteries and petrol, the atmosphere recalled the nation's 15-year civil war, and the 18-year Israeli occupation they thought had ended forever in 2000. For some in Israel the closer historical parallel was with the run-up to the war of 1967.
For most of the day roads across northern Israel were empty, most people apparently obeying official instructions to stay inside. Many of the houses and apartment blocks have underground bunkers.
In mid-afternoon, in the almost-deserted centre of Nahariya in northern Israel, a Hizbullah rocket landed in the middle of a normally busy avenue, shattering windows in a shopping centre.
"We will continue suffering like this until the military makes them stop," said David Shevli (32), who had closed his grocery store on Thursday and spent yesterday fielding calls on his mobile from worried friends.
Israel is still reeling from the double assault on its military prestige by separate attacks from Hizbullah and Hamas, which captured an Israeli soldier a month ago. Not only was the strongest army in the Middle East taken by surprise, but its assailants managed, through capturing soldiers, to prolong the pain.
Most Israelis could ignore the rocket attacks on Sderot and the farming communities that surround the Gaza strip. The bombardment of northern Israel, home to around 300,000 people, is physically much farther from Tel Aviv than is Sderot, but psychologically much closer. Most Israelis have visited Haifa, or holidayed in Galilee.
While there is little criticism in the media or on the street of Israel's attacks across the border, under the surface there are fears that Lebanon, which dominated Israeli politics from 1982 to 2000, could again become a graveyard for its soldiers.
The international response to the situation in Lebanon has been broadly condemnatory of Israel, but the US has given cautious backing to the attacks, and the issue seems likely to dominate the G8 summit in St Petersburg, starting today. In New York the UN Security Council was also expected to discuss the emergency, following an appeal from Lebanon's prime minister, Fouad Sinoria, for the world body to intervene.
But the immediate and longer term impact of the crisis will be measured inside Lebanon, where, unlike Israel, Hizbullah cannot be dismissed simply as a terrorist organisation. It is part of the national political fabric.
If Israel's aim is to drive a wedge between Hizbullah and the rest of Lebanon there are signs it may not be succeeding. Israel's attempt to hold the Lebanese government responsible has also caused resentment.
Whatever the logic of the attack, it was playing itself out with painful repercussions yesterday in, among other places, the now inaccessible Lebanese coastal village of Doueir. A family with 10 children died just outside the village when missiles hit their home on Thursday night, a civil defence supervisor said. - (Guardian Service)