WITH Israel's warplanes buzzing overhead yesterday and its artillery still rumbling in the distance, UN soldiers, numbed by the carnage, cleared up the remains of more than 100 Lebanese refugees blown apart by Israeli shells on Thursday.
Blood was smeared across the ground and on the makeshift shelters where the Lebanese victims, driven from their homes by Israel's week long offensive, had huddled in a futile search for safety.
Lebanese security sources placed the death toll at 101 Lebanese refugees, with an estimated 110 more wounded. Four UN soldiers at the base, headquarters for the Fijian detachment of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon", (UNIFIL), were also wounded.
In Suva, capital of Fiji, the government strongly deplored the Israeli shelling. The Foreign Minister, Mr Filipe Bole, expressed his government's "deep concern" at what he said was an indiscriminate Israeli attack. He said Fiji would send a formal note to the Israeli government condemning the action.
The three seriously wounded Fijian soldiers were taken to hospital in Haifa, Israel, where they were in a stable condition the Fiji military forces said.
Some 200 Fijian troops were in the base at Qana when the shelling occurred.
Twenty nine Fijian soldiers have been killed since the country joined UNIFIL when it was set up in 1978.
Back at Qana, only one Lebanese family, with their eldest son in hospital, remained in the compound yesterday. Other survivors among the 500 refugees who had, sheltered there on Thursday had fled elsewhere.
"We saw dead people, we could not count," said a Fijian corporal who showed more shock than anger. "I did not carry any complete bodies. I carried only pieces."
UN soldiers cleared rubble and burned pieces of the shattered shelter where the refugees were ripped apart by shrapnel from Israeli 155mm shells. A stench of fire and blood permeated the base.
The Israelis, claiming they had hit the refugees by accident, said the shelling was in reprisal for Hizbullah rockets fired from a point hundreds of metres from the UNIFIL base.
Responding to the Israeli claim, the Lebanese Prime Minister, Mr Rafik al Hariri, said in Beirut: "Really I can't judge. But it is very difficult for anyone to believe that it was not done specifically to attack the refugees."
For UNIFIL it was the bloodiest - but certainly not the first attack by Israeli forces. Since, 1978 more than 200 UN soldiers have been killed and 300 wounded in southern Lebanon some by Lebanese guerrillas but many by Israeli shelling.
A UN soldier described Thursday's deadly attack. "I told people to flee to the shelter," he said. "The capacity of the shelter, is 150 people but at that moment we had 150 soldiers and between 800-850 civilians, so it was impossible to have all of them. Then I saw fire all around."
In the village of Qana outside the base, home to some 4,000 people before the Israeli offensive, only about 25 people could be found yesterday. A mass funeral in the village for victims of the shelling is planned for today.
"Yesterday I survived this massacre," said Fawzieh Assaghir (60), standing next to her husband. "I was in the base but I survived. There is no difference, between the base and my home, so I returned to my home. I am here to die in my home.