The Dead Cannot Wait

The government hospital had run out of room for human remains by Friday. More than 100 bomb-wrecked bodies were already crammed into poorly refrigerated container trucks, and more corpses were pouring in daily.

So they built cheap coffins of pine. Bulldozers carved 6-foot-deep trenches into a desolate lot littered with old telephone poles.

The stench of death seeped into the warm seaside air as the dead were brought out. Children pinched their noses; the men's faces grew a little stonier. Men and boys jostled on the streets and hoisted themselves up hospital walls to better view the spectacle.

There was no opportunity for a more dignified burial: The clashes between Israel and Hezbollah have been too fierce for people to collect their loved ones or hold funerals.

"I've been a doctor for years, and I've never seen anything like this," said Nabil Harkus, a slight man who stood over a trio of unidentified corpses and spoke with slow, intense rage.

"They can't fight Hezbollah because Hezbollah is not an army," he said, referring to the Israeli warplanes overhead. "They kill the people because they think it's the only way to stop Hezbollah."

The Lebanese government has confirmed the deaths of about 350 people in the fighting, but rescue workers here warn that the tally is probably much higher. Relentless bombing has wrecked roads and rendered communication so spotty that no one knows how many people have died.

Soubiha Abdullah rocked back and forth as she waited for the bodies of her family to be pulled from a heap of remains. The doctors had given her rubber gloves and a surgical mask, which she wore over her head scarf.

She had come to identify and bury 24 members of her family, including her sister and her sister's nine children. They died trying to escape their village; Israeli planes had attacked the road as they drove.

"I'm saying, 'God give me the strength to see them,' " she said. "We just want to see them, even if they're pieces of meat."

It was a crude burial carried out under a baking sun, but even that was much better than most people felled in south Lebanon's furious fighting could expect.

In the 75 villages surrounding Tyre, at least 180 people have been killed, according to the district's Red Cross office. The International Committee of the Red Cross says those are only the ones it knows about and that there may be more.