"NOTHING could prepare us for what we saw today," an Army medic told Army headquarters in Dublin yesterday afternoon. "Dismembered bodies, screaming women and children, pools of blood, scenes of absolute carnage."
Comdt Ross Kingston, a doctor with Unifil, was one of 10 Irish medical staff who were among the first on the scene. "There is a mass of charred bodies stuck together in one of the buildings," he said. By early afternoon he reported 57 dead, a number which almost doubled in the course of the day.
Israeli warplanes continued to fire rockets near the base as ambulances and rescue workers tried to remove the dead and injured.
At lunchtime yesterday some local people had gathered at the headquarters of Unifil's Fijian battalion in the village of Qana. They were there for food which was being distributed from a building which housed offices and a dining hall.
According to an Army spokesman, more than 30 rounds of Israeli artillery were fired at the village. Six hit the building from which food was being distributed. The resulting fire caused most of the deaths.
A spokesman at the UN headquarters in Naquora said some 500 refugees were in the base when it was hit.
The blown out container was littered with body parts and smeared with blood. Some of the bodies were burned, others blown apart. The injured included men, women, babies and children.
The injured were ferried to hospitals in Tyre and Sidon, but staff there quickly declared they were unable to cope. There were frantic scenes in hospitals in Tyre when the injured arrived in private cars, ambulances and UN helicopters. Every UN battalion, including the Irish, sent medical teams, as medics from the Lebanese Army, the Lebanese Red Cross, Medecins Sans Frontieres and other agencies rushed to the scene.
The Irishbatt headquarters at Tibnin is just 12 km from the scene of the attack. No Irish troops were involved in the attack and all are well, said an Army spokesman.
Yesterday in the Qana compound bodies were strewn everywhere. Relatives screamed and beat their heads in anguish. Horrified peace keepers wept as they tried to help the wounded, who included children, many with severe burns or limbs torn off.
Decapitated corpses and shreds of flesh were scattered inside the prefabricated building used as a canteen in the compound. In another makeshift shelter, the fire was so intense that seven bodies were burned beyond recognition.
One UN peace keeper said: "I saw the massacre of the market in Sarajevo on television, and it was nothing compared to what I saw in Qana."