The battle started at 3am and raged for two hours. Later, one could drive around the city and see the bootprints of Israeli soldiers in the sand, the skeleton of the Lebanese army's anti-aircraft artillery, the charred motor scooter sprawled by the side of the road like a dead insect.
It was possible to learn the basic facts about the deaths of seven Lebanese.
But from three until five in the morning, there was no one to explain, and the residents of the little house where I've rented a room near the harbour were here "as on a darkling plain where ignorant armies clash by night".
At first, I drifted in and out of sleep, subconsciously noting that the helicopters, fighter-bombers and explosions grew louder and louder. There were long, sporadic bursts of heavy machine gun fire.
When the electric ceiling fan stopped seconds after a very loud "pop," I knew the Israelis had hit the electricity. My first concerns were selfish: how would I recharge my mobile phone and computer? Without electricity to power the pumps, there would be no water either.
So I made a cup of tea and sat in the garden, amid the fig and frangipani trees, fighting the urge to run into the house at every loud explosion. The Christian landlord and the American journalist who sleeps on the veranda joined me.
Were the Israelis advancing up the coastal highway, making good their threat to reach the Litani river? That seemed the obvious explanation.
We watched a veil of black smoke cross the stars, above the Mediterranean: a damaged Israeli helicopter, limping back to base? Or smoke from a burning ammunition dump? From the harbour, you could see sparks in the darkness. We later surmised it was ammunition at the Lebanese army emplacement.
At dawn the noise subsided. By 9.30 the Lebanese had circumvented the destroyed transformer and the electricity came on. Boys climbed the fig trees in the garden.
There was still shelling and bombing, but it had receded to a safe distance. What felt like catastrophe in the night gave way to the new hope of morning.
A little detective work revealed the following: Israeli forces had staged a landing on the beach scarcely a kilometre away, at Mafra Abbassieh, where I file my reports to The Irish Times from a desolate internet shop.
The Israelis killed four Hizbullah men, one of them a sheikh. One body was handcuffed and shot in the back and head; either he tried to escape, or was summarily executed when the raid went wrong for the Israelis.
If you listen to the Israelis, this whole war started when Hizbullah captured two Israeli soldiers during a cross-border raid on July 12th.
Hizbullah says they had no choice, that peaceful attempts to obtain the release of four Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails, (one of whom, Samir Qantar, has been held for 28 years) failed. In any case, both sides are keen to replenish their stock of hostages.
The Israelis said eight of their men were wounded, and it was apparently to cover their evacuation by three Apache helicopters that the air force pounded the coastline.
Hours after the raid was over, two young men on a motor scooter were killed by rockets fired from an "MK" drone.
Mohamed Ballout, a reporter for al-Allam television who filmed their death, said they had tried to visit a brother in the combat zone, got frightened, turned around and were pursued by the drone. One of them owned a small cafe in Tyre.
"There was a ball of fire, then two bodies, still smoking. One of the heads was blown 10 metres away," Ballout said.
The seventh victim of the raid, a Lebanese army anti-aircraft artillery gunner, didn't stand a chance. The most surprising thing is that he made the suicidal gesture of firing on the Israeli Apaches.
"At the beginning of the war, the army were firing on planes with AAA," said Abed al Muhsen al-Husseini, the mayor of Tyre. "I couldn't accept that. People here have prevented Hizbullah from coming into Tyre.
First they ask politely, and if it doesn't work, they call the army or the gendarmerie. Hizbullah promised not to fire from Tyre. I am protecting my city; but will the Israelis understand? I don't think they want to."
"If Tyre is attacked, no one has any place to eat or sleep," said al-Husseini's deputy, Mahmoud Halawi. "Tyre is the last pocket of peace."
The city has, nonetheless, been attacked five times, including this weekend's botched Israeli landing. The first time, on July 16th, the Israelis bombed the civil defence building, killing more than 20 people - a clear breach of the Geneva Convention.
The second time, they bombed a building owned by a school teacher, mistaking it for one holding the office of Sheikh Nabil Qawouk of Hizbullah. The third time, they got Sheikh Qawouk's building. The fourth attack targeted the former municipality building; no one knows why.
Israel occupied southern Lebanon for 22 years, and former collaborators have doubtless been kept on the payroll.
Lebanese television regularly reports the arrest of alleged spies - about 40 in Beirut's southern suburbs, 20 in Nabatieh, and another 20 or so in the Tyre region. Hizbullah security detains the men, who are suspected of telling the Israelis which buildings to bomb, even marking them with lasers.
Both sides engage in "psy-ops". A few days ago, I answered the phone at 6am to hear a man's voice speaking Arabic. I tried to interrupt him to say I was not the owner, and realised it was a tape recording.
"Stay away from Hizbullah positions," the voice said, signing off, "State of Israel."
An acquaintance received a similar phone call. "Hassan!" said the anonymous caller, addressing the Hizbullah leader, Hassan Nasrallah. "You are fighting an enemy of iron."
But the caller on Saturday afternoon was only my landlord's worried relative in Amman. "The Israelis are saying that everyone must leave Tyre," he told me. (He was mistaken: it was the city of Sidon, further north, that was threatened.) "Please tell my cousins to leave if they can."