Lebanese plead for help in shattered border town

BINT JBEIL, Lebanon, Aug 1 (Reuters) The first words Deeba Ibrahim uttered when she saw rescue workers approaching to evacuate her from this southern Lebanese front-line town were ''please bring me water''.

Her face covered in cuts and her clothes in tatters, she said she had spent several days inside a deserted, damaged store in Bint Jbeil without food or water.

''I came here to stay with my daughter but I did not find her,'' said Ibrahim, a woman in her 70s wearing Islamic dress, as she gulped water and juice.

''Take me to the hospital now, please,'' she told rescue workers, clinging to a plastic bag of medication.

The areas around Bint Jbeil and the nearby village of Maroun al-Ras have seen the fiercest fighting between Israeli forces and Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas during the Jewish state's three-week-old offensive designed to cripple the Shi'ite group.

Heavy Israeli air strikes and artillery shelling flattened scores of houses in Bint Jbeil, which has a population of 4,000.

Bombed-out cars, broken fridges and slabs of concrete from shattered houses blocked several streets. A fire engine, sliced in two, lay overturned on one street next to what appeared to be a damaged military jeep.

Dozens of residents, many carrying their children, emerged from makeshift shelters to leave the town with the rescue convoy, which arrived after an Israeli decision to halt air strike on the south for 48 hours.

Israel decided on the pause to allow time for an investigation into Sunday's air raid on the village of Qana that killed at least 54 civilians, including 37 children.

It also agreed to coordinate with the UN to give southern Lebanon's residents a 24-hour window to leave the area.

BLOODY BATTLE Hizbollah, whose capture of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border operation on July 12 ignited the war, killed 16 Israeli soldiers in battles in the area. Israel said it had killed scores of guerrillas there but the group did not confirm the statement.

Many residents and refugees spoke of the horror they endured in the shelters, hearing explosions nearby and Israeli warplanes overhead. Exploding artillery shells could still be heard in the distance yesterday.

''We kept hearing screams really close to us during the night,'' said Zeinab Fares, an eight-year-old girl who fled the fighting in Maroun al-Ras with her mother on foot before the battles erupted around Bint Jbeil.

''More than 13 children were hiding with us in the shelter,'' said her mother, Fatemah. ''What did those children do to Israel? Did they destroy any tank? May God destroy Israel.'' Zeinab Deibes, a thin, elderly woman, said she and about 50 other people spent five days sheltering in the house of one of the town's religious leaders.

''Our food ran out and we were drinking dirty water,'' she said as she emerged from the house.

In spite of the destruction, posters of Hizbollah's charismatic leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and the group's yellow flags were still standing.

''The Israeli hand that will try and touch the resistance's weapons will be cut off,'' read a banner in front of an Israeli tank seized by Hizbollah fighters during the Jewish state's withdrawal from south Lebanon six years ago, ending a 22-year-old occupation.

REUTERS MQA PM0926