QANA, Lebanon – Abu Shadi Jradi pulled bodies out of wreckage for hours – two toddler girls wearing tiny gold earrings, a small boy whose pale blue pacifier still hung from his neck. Somewhere in the middle, Jradi slumped beneath a tree and wept.
“There are so many children, so many children,” the civil defense worker said Sunday, barely able to get out the words.
Two extended families, the Shalhoubs and the Hashems, had gathered in a three-story house on the outskirts of the village of Qana for shelter from another night of Israeli bombardment when the 1 a.m. missile strike brought the building down.
Police said 34 children and 12 women were among the 56 killed, most of them crushed or suffocated in the rubble.
On Sunday, rescue workers dripped with sweat in the blistering heat as they pored through the wreckage, tossing out a baby carriage and moving hunks of concrete and brick. Through the morning, workers dug with their hands before heavy machinery arrived in the afternoon to search for bodies deeper within the wreckage.
Thirteen-year-old Noor Hashem was one of only eight survivors found by the afternoon.
She was pulled out by her uncle, Mohammed Shalhoub, whose wife, five children and mother all died. Noor’s four brothers and sisters were also killed. Her mother survived but she didn’t know about her father.
Noor said she woke up screaming when the rocket hit.
“I was so afraid. There was dirt and rocks and I couldn’t see. Everything was black. I couldn’t see anyone. I tried to push the rocks and everything off of me and then someone pulled me out,” she said.
The dead were carried out in blankets, sheets and carpets. The eldest was a 95-year-old man, a Shalhoub – the youngest a 9-month-old child of the Hashems.
The arm of a child slipped from beneath the dirty gray blanket that covered him. On the same stretcher, toes painted with bright red polish peeked out. A rescue worker lifted the blanket to show two shattered children who were curled up, appearing asleep except for the thick dried blood at their noses.
Khalil Shalhoub who had been clearing rubble lunged at a stretcher when he saw who was on it: his brother. The workers carrying it stumbled as he screamed.
Khalil Shalhoub had been in a nearby house when the missile hit.
“It came in right at the door. I saw it. It was aimed right for the door,” he said. He said planes were still firing afterward, preventing him and others from rushing to the wreckage in the night.
“In this village, there are so few places to hide that we just go into one or two houses and sit together. It is like a shelter,” he said.
In the hospital’s courtyard, Mohammed Shalhoub – who had saved his young niece but lost his five children – sat with lifeless eyes, his right hand broken. For long moments, he was quiet. Then he spoke, to no one in particular.
“I wish God would have left me just one child,” he said softly, then started to cry.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
