South Lebanon hospital puts war dead in mass grave

TYRE, Lebanon, July 21 (Reuters) Flooded with casualties from Israeli bombardment, today a hospital in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre began burying the dead in a mass grave.

Officials at the main 60-bed government hospital said 72 bodies were being interred temporarily in the yard of an army barracks until they could be returned to relatives.

The officials, who declined to be named, said the hospital needed to clear space in its morgue after receiving 106 bodies, including 22 not identified. Relatives had taken away 12 of the bodies, they said. Some bodies had come from other hospitals.

''May God destroy Israel,'' said Kamel Abdallah, 35, whose pregnant wife, five children and father were killed in an air strike on the border village of Marwaheen.

''The circumstances don't allow me to take them back now, so I'll leave them here,'' he said, as he watched the bodies of his family being placed in the temporary grave.

Israeli air strikes have damaged many roads in south Lebanon, where fighting between the Israeli army and Hizbollah guerrillas has also made movement difficult and dangerous.

Samar Ghanem, 40, whose brother-in-law and his five children were also killed in Marwaheen, said they had died as martyrs.

''We sacrificed for the sake of the resistance,'' she told Reuters. ''We agreed to the temporary burial because we can't take them to the village, we have no choice.'' Israel's campaign in Lebanon, launched after Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight on July 12, has forced up to half a million people to flee their homes and made it hard for relief groups to get aid to distressed civilians.

The International Committee of the Red Cross was sending its first convoy of two trucks to Tyre today with 24 tonnes of food, first-aid kits and medicine, along with a surgeon to assess conditions in the city's main hospital, a spokesman said.

''The siege on Lebanon is not letting humanitarian aid in,'' the ICRC's Hisham Hassan added. ''The south is isolated.'' Reuters DKA RS1651