LEBANON: The roar of jet engines echoes across the open plains and small white triangles can be seen in the patchy blue sky.
Israeli F16s have left a scene of scorched mayhem on the streets of Nabatiyeh, a large town near the border. A young man runs from the blast site, his hand pressed to his bleeding head; other survivors stagger aimlessly in shock.
The two residential buildings that were directly hit had been almost empty. Ambulance workers scramble over the wreckage, pulling bodies from rubble as fire engines wail in the background. Three people were killed and four injured.
Flames rage in a nearby field where the heat of the explosion set fire to the brambles. Steel shutters along the street were warped by the force.
Each of the major roads into the town bears huge craters, targeted along with every bridge linking Beirut to the southern border area.
The usually bustling streets of the largely Shia town are abandoned. Its residents stay at home watching television and the skies above them.
Faded pictures of Hizbullah militants killed during Israel's occupation of the south hang from lampposts throughout Nabatiyeh's barren streets.
In the near-distance, the boom of explosions continues as Israel pounds Hizbullah positions on the border less than 15 km away. Many families living abroad who came home for the summer holidays have found themselves stranded in a war zone.
Two sisters, who brought their children from Germany to visit their family, are huddled in a one-roomed house with 19 relatives.
They are watching Hizbullah's television channel, al-Manar, and hearing reports of a heavy firefight on the border with Israel. The entire area has been severed from the rest of the south after Israeli war planes destroyed the five crucial bridges that cross the Litani river, ruling out any way of getting medical attention or much-needed food supplies.
In another part of town, Mary, who had travelled from Gabon to visit her family, says she wished she had never come. "I'm so scared. They [ the Israelis] bomb anything - they don't seem to care what they hit."
The interview is cut short by another roar of jets overhead. The small crowd gathered to be interviewed scatters in seconds, and terrified children run in fear of the expected bombing.
Late last night, Lebanon's prime minister, Fouad Siniora, declared his country a disaster zone, increasing the sense of siege among residents of the south.
An official from Nabatiyeh's social affairs ministry, who asked not to be named as she has been ordered not to talk to the media, said the social affairs minister, Nayla Mouwad, had promised to bring in supplies but that, so far, nothing had been able to get through.
"They are waiting for international agencies to come in and supply the people, but they cannot until there is a ceasefire," she explained.
In the nearby village of Farseea, a civilian house is in ruins, flattened by an Israeli air raid the previous night. Fortunately, the owner had fled to the north a day earlier.
Not far from the bombed house, an old woman, who no longer has the use of her legs, has been moved to the basement for safety.
Her grandson, Ali, says he feared for friends in the border villages: "In a few days, all supplies will run out. There are already food shortages."
Asked the whereabouts of the Hizbullah militants, Hussein, an older man standing outside an office building, says: "The fighting is on the border. The fighters here are not showing themselves, they are lying in wait." He says some of the fighters come from Bekaa valley and other parts of Lebanon, and that he believes Hizbullah's current confrontation with Israel could hold out indefinitely.
"The Israelis have changed their tactics - they want to keep the area paralysed. They are not in a hurry to invade," he says.
One of the few vehicles trying to flee the village is a rented car decked out with a huge bouquet of flowers on the boot and bonnet. The occupants, Yaman and Nada, were married earlier in the day and are hastily making their way from their wedding ceremony to their new home in a nearby village.
They say they wanted to spend their honeymoon in the mountains above - as far as possible from the Israeli bombs.