Lebanese hospital struggles to cope with the dead

TYRE, Lebanon, Aug 16 (Reuters) As a truce held in south Lebanon today, workers dug a mass grave for more than 100 people killed during Israel's war with Hizbollah but later postponed the burial so relatives had more time to claim bodies.

Corpses are being removed from the ruins of destroyed buildings in the south following the truce. Many are taken to a makeshift morgue at a hospital in the southern city of Tyre, where other unclaimed bodies have lain for days or weeks.

The hospital had been planning a mass burial of up to 126 bodies in a grave near an army barracks. Seventy-two corpses were buried there on July 21.

However, the latest burial was postponed because not all the bodies had been identified and some relatives, who had been unable to claim their loved ones in the upheaval of war, wanted to bury them elsewhere.

''There are names which are not clear,'' said Dr Moustafa Jradeh.

''There are people who want to bury them in their villages. If we bury them here it will cause a lot of problems.'' The tenuous truce, in force since Monday, has prompted tens of thousands of mostly Shi'ite Muslim refugees to head home, even though Israeli bombing has wrecked many towns and villages.

Aid agencies are trying to help the returnees, as well as up to 120,000 people who remained south of the Litani River, some 20 km from the Israeli border, during the war.

''Our major concern is not so much the fact that so many people have returned to their homes, but the fragility of the ceasefire,'' said Robin Lodge, spokesman for the UN World Food Programme. ''We're worried that if it doesn't hold, a lot of these people will once again be in a perilous position.'' MORE REUTERS BDP RAI2030