Craig Nelson - For the Journal-Constitution Tuesday, July 25, 2006 http://www.ajc.com/tuesday/content/epaper/editions/tuesday/news_445c1b6a3197c05110e0.html Tyre, Lebanon --- Kasem Chaalan had an inkling something bad would happen. Chaalan, 28, was hurrying out of the headquarters of the local chapter of the Lebanese Red Cross late Sunday evening to pick up some wounded. As he rushed toward the door, he asked his colleagues lounging in the office in this southern Lebanese town to forgive him for any wrongs he may have done them. It was the first time in 13 years of volunteering for the Red Cross that he had ever uttered such words. "I don't know why I said it," he recalled Monday, hours after Israeli rockets hit his ambulance and another vehicle, wounding him and eight others. In its effort to weaken the Islamic Hezbollah militia, prevent its rockets from raining on Israeli towns and secure the return of two captured Israeli soldiers, Israel has kept up an assault on southern Lebanon with airstrikes, artillery and a swelling ground offensive. Across what have become some of the most perilous stretches of road in the world, Chaalan and other Red Cross volunteers venture into the combat zone. The Lebanese Red Cross is one of the few organizations in southern Lebanon working to evacuate the wounded and civilians under fire. Late Sunday, Chaalan and two other volunteers drove their ambulance 10 miles southeast to the town of Qana, where they met another Red Cross ambulance from the village of Tebnine. It was carrying three wounded people in need of medical care in the better-equipped hospitals to the north. Shortly after the three wounded Lebanese were lifted from one ambulance to the other, the red cross atop each converted white Toyota van became a bull's-eye. Chaalan and his crew loaded the three wounded into their ambulance. As he closed the vehicle's rear door, an Israeli rocket hurtled through the roof of the ambulance. Thrown to the ground and blinded briefly by the blast, Chaalan shouted to the crew of the second ambulance to call headquarters. The call went out: "Ambulance 777 has been targeted." Within seconds, an Israeli missile tore through the roof of the second ambulance. For the next 90 minutes, while requests for clearances were transmitted to Israeli authorities through Beirut and the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Swiss city of Geneva, the three-man crews of each ambulance looked after each other and the three wounded people until help arrived. Fuller explanation sought Late Monday, one of the wounded --- 40-year-old Ahmed Mustafa Farwaz --- lay in a coma in a Jabel Amel Hospital in Tyre with his right leg amputated and his left leg fractured. His son Mohammed Farwaz, 14, was in serious condition with shrapnel wounds in his abdomen. The third wounded person, who was unidentified, was transferred in critical condition north to a hospital in Sidon. The Red Cross workers suffered light injuries. "The incident in which vehicles were hit last night occurred in an area known to be one of the main sources of the launching of hundreds of missiles," an Israeli army spokesman said Monday in a statement. Civilians had been warned with leaflets and by radio broadcasts to leave the area, the statement said, and Israel blamed Hezbollah for placing civilians in the area at risk. The Red Cross asked Israel for a fuller explanation. "The ICRC is gravely concerned about the safety of medical staff," Balthasar Staehelin, the organization's delegate-general for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement. "We have raised this issue with the Israeli authorities and urged them to take the measures needed to avoid such incidents in the future." In Sunday's incident, both Red Cross ambulances were plainly marked. Each vehicle was flashing a blue emergency light and displayed a Red Cross flag that was illuminated, Chaalan said. Israel blames Hezbollah In the past, Israeli authorities have alleged that ambulances were used by Palestinian militants in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to transport weapons and personnel. Israel has often boasted of the pinpoint accuracy of its air attacks, and denies that it is targeting civilians. Civilians are harmed, Israeli officials say, because Hezbollah operates in populated areas. Nursing a wide bandage that covered three stitches in the cleft of his chin, Chaalan, who when he is not volunteering for the Red Cross defuses land mines in southern Lebanon for a British aid group, refused to say whether he thought the attack on the ambulances was deliberate. However, Ali Deeb, a spokesman for the local Red Cross chapter, said the possibility that two rockets fired into identical locations in the roofs of two ambulances were a coincidence or an accident was "zero." As he spoke, nearby against the low-slung wall of the Red Cross compound was the discarded equipment of a rescue mission gone horribly wrong --- two stretchers, covered in blood and partially scorched and melted from the heat of the missile blast and a Red Cross helmet scarred with shrapnel. Next to them was a line of parked Red Cross vehicles. They were unlikely to be used anytime soon in a war that continues to rage in the countryside around this southern Lebanese city. Due to the danger of the roads to the south and east of Tyre, all are now barred from going outside the city limits to retrieve the wounded. Staff writer Don Melvin (dmelvin@ajc.com) contributed to this article from Jerusalem. |
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