‘See dogs eating bodies in the rubble’

Qana

There was no smell of death. The dying had taken place too recently. When I arrived they were still pulling corpses from the collapsed building. The first I saw were two young brothers of the Shalhoub family. If you have ever watched sleeping children carried to their beds late at night, you will have some idea of the scene. The dead children of Qana looked as if they were in a deep slumber. The shock waves of the explosion had collapsed their lungs, suffocating them in the rubble. I saw one whose mouth and nose were stuffed with sand. The only sign of the violence done to them was a trickle of blood from the noses of a few and several dark bruises where masonry had crashed on to their flesh. I counted five child corpses being carried out in just ten minutes.

A Red Cross man laid a blanket on the ground.