‘How much you eat in one day is how much we have eaten in 20 days’

THOUSANDS of Lebanese limped north to safety yesterday after weeks spent trapped by fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, including the war’s bloodiest ground battle.

Some had survived on just sweets and dirty water. Two died on the road out.

Those residents of Bint Jbail who didn’t flee went into hiding when Israel started its bombardment on July 12. They hunkered down deeper eight days ago when Israeli forces launched their ground assault on the border town, a Hezbollah stronghold with a legendary history of supporting the Shi’ite guerrillas.

Israeli troops met fierce guerrilla resistance before they withdrew from Bint Jbail on Saturday, leaving behind a swath of destruction. Buildings were collapsed on each other. The fronts of other buildings were sheared off. Fallen power lines crisscrossed roads. Charred hulks of smashed cars lined the street. A stone monument to Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah was blasted full of holes.

Rimah Bazzi, an American visiting from Dearborn, Michigan, spent the siege with her two daughters, son and mother hiding in a doctor’s house.

“All the time I thought of death,” said Bazzi, in her late 30s.

Mehdi al-Halim, 73, stumbled as he tried to walk out of the ruins of Bint Jbail. He had and his wife had been hiding in their home for weeks since the start of Israeli air strikes.

“We had no food, no water,” he said. “Everyday we had only one candy each, one candy that is all. How much you eat in one day is how much we have eaten in 20 days. I haven’t seen the sun for 20 days.”

Around 200 residents — mostly elderly or mothers with young children — managed to escape yesterday during Israel’s temporary halt in air strikes. Because roads were destroyed, most people walked, some the entire five miles to the nearest hospital in Tibnin. Ambulances carried the eldest, who couldn’t make it on their own.

Two residents died as they tried to make it out, one of malnutrition, the other of heart failure, said Nabil Harkus, a doctor in Tibnin, where the bodies were brought.