Friday, August 11, 2006

Peace at Last

This morning at 5am, we woke up to about 30 minutes of intense bombing of the southern Beirut suburbs. If you have the capacity to watch videos - I would suggest you log on to this blog which captures the sound of the bombs going off at 5am or 4am or even midnight when you are sound asleep...

http://beirutlive.blogspot.com/

Word just in that the Security Council has finally got a ceasefire resolution in front of it that all people can live with. Maybe tomorrow morning we will wake up and hear that the bombing will stop. I hope so.
We drove to a fairly safe place in the Beqaa valley today over the mountains. It was eerie. Noone was on the road and the few people that were (mostly truckers toting watermelons to the cities) were hauling ass. Now, Lebanese drive like maniacs anyway but the empty empty roads, the occasional bombed out truck, and the silence was a little unnerving.

We went to a school and interviewed a woman who had been displaced four times. From her village in the South where she was staying with her mother and three kids for the summer, to Tyre where the bombing scared them away, to Dahiyeh - the Southern suburbs where the bombs hit this morning (and everyday) and finally yesterday, she came to this school. They have absolutely nothing.

We also released our first bulletin on the issue today - should be up on RI's website. There's also a photo of a bombed out truck that I took on the highway today.

I hope that when I wake up tomorrow morning, I will hear that there is peace and we can head to the South to see if we can reach the people who have been trapped down there.

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