Death
Toll Could Be Twice
The Official Figure
By Dahr Jamail
29 July, 2006
Inter Press Service
BEIRUT, Jul 28 (IPS)
- Lebanese doctors, aid workers and refugees are all reporting that
the official number of dead in Lebanon is far lower than the actual.
"I think that the real
number is at least 750 dead so far," Dr. Bachir el-Sham at the
Complex Hospital in Sidon city told IPS in a telephone interview. Sidon
is 43 km south of Beirut, and just north of Tyre. This region has seen
the worst of the Israeli bombing.
Sham said that by coordinating
casualty figures with other hospitals and clinics in the south, he believes
that an average of 40 civilians are being killed by Israeli air strikes
each day.
"One day we had 100
dead. The authorities in Beirut can only estimate -- we never have official
statistics about anything in Lebanon," he said. "Regarding
the number of dead, we can say for sure that by the numbers we're seeing
down here, it is at least 750, if not more."
One reason the real number
will be higher is that "so many people are buried in the rubble,"
he said.
As in Dahaya district of
southern Beirut, both Sidon and Tyre have had large numbers of civilian
apartment buildings bombed to the ground, many with entire families
in them.
"When you have a building
demolished, how many people are under the rubble? Who can say? But we
know there are many."
Bilal Masri, assistant director
at the large Beirut Government University Hospital in Beirut, also told
IPS that the official number was far too low.
"We have had several
reports from the south that there are many bodies buried under buildings,
or left in cars that were hit by Israeli rockets," he said.
Ghadeer Shayto, a 15-year-old
girl being treated at the Beirut hospital for wounds she suffered during
an Israeli rocket attack while fleeing her village Kafra near Bint Jbail,
said she had seen many dead on her way to Beirut.
"On our way out we passed
so many civilian cars which had burnt bodies in them," she said,
weeping. "They were burnt, and left there because nobody could
come to take the bodies away." Bint Jbail is the southern town
that has seen the most intense fighting between Israeli troops and Hezbollah
fighters.
She said the bus in which
they were leaving had hoisted white flags, but it was hit by a rocket.
"My brother and cousin were killed, and the rest of us are wounded."
Abdel Hamid al-Ashi, father
of two, saw similar sights as he fled Bint Jbail.
"I had to walk 10 kilometres
to a small village to find a taxi, and along the road I saw many bodies
rotting in the sun," he told IPS. "There were also cars which
had been rocketed which were full of bodies."
Many patients and refugees
reported seeing bodies along the way when they fled. Under continuing
air strikes, no aid teams have been able to rescue anyone or retrieve
the bodies.
In Dahaya district of Beirut
about a fifth of all buildings have been totally demolished. There was
a strong smell of rotting corpses at many of those sites that this correspondent
visited.
Volunteer workers are also
reporting that the officially declared toll is too low.
"Several of our relief
workers who tried to help in Dahaya have reported to us that many families
are buried under the rubble there," Wafaa el-Yassir, a representative
of Norwegian People's Aid-Lebanon told IPS at her office. "And
we have similar reports from Tyre and Sidon."
"The number of dead
is as much as 800 by now," she added. "And probably even more,
but it will take some time to find all of the bodies."
Ahmad Halimeh, with the non-governmental
organisation Popular Aid for Relief and Development who is now working
primarily to aid war victims in Beirut and southern Lebanon, said that
"in my experience you can always at least double the initial figure,
and we are seeing the same thing happen again now. So the number is
at least 800, and will be more over time as we continue to gain access
to these areas that have been destroyed."
There is little doubt that
the real death toll is far higher than the official one. The question
remains, by how much?