Aid workers lament no safe access to south Lebanon

BEIRUT - Aid workers are finding it impossible to get medical supplies and food safely to isolated villages in southern Lebanon due to the Israeli bombardment, aid agencies said today.

A humanitarian corridor has allowed the United Nations to truck food and basic medical supplies to the southern port of Tyre, but getting safe passage beyond that is another matter.

"For us, the major issue is clearly the impossible access in the south. This talk of a humanitarian corridor should not mask the real situation," said Christopher Stokes, director of operations for Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) Belgium.

"It's a kind of humanitarian alibi because in effect there is no real humanitarian access in the south. And we are deluding ourselves, the international community is deluding itself, if it believes there is," he said in his Beirut office.

The Lebanese authorities say up to 600 civilians may have been killed in a 17-day Israeli onslaught, which began after Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas killed eight Israeli soldiers and seized two in a cross-border raid on July 12.

Dozens of air raids struck villages near Tyre on Friday and hundreds of artillery rounds crashed across the border from Israel killing 14 people.

One Israeli shell crashed near a Lebanese aid convoy on Friday, wounding at least three people, witnesses said.

World Food Programme spokesman in Beirut, Robin Lodge, said the UN food aid organisation had been unable to move supplies trucked to Tyre beyond to villages in the south.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Friday some of its convoys in the south had been turned back because of intense fighting and it launched an appeal for 100 million Swiss francs (US$81 million) ($132.22 million) to step its humanitarian work in Lebanon.

"In southern Lebanon, the number one issue today is ensuring the safety of civilians and securing safe access for those engaged in medical and other humanitarian activities," ICRC director of operations Pierre Kraehenbuehl said in a statement.

The UN estimates there are up to 800,000 people in Lebanon displaced by the fighting and bombing. It said there are nearly 600 schools being used as shelters, with between 100 and 1,200 people in each school.

A soldier in the UN force in south Lebanon (UNIFIL), which has been shuttling to border villages in white UN armoured personnel carriers this week, said getting people out was risky.

Speaking under condition of anonymity in Tyre after rescuing people from the border town of Rmeish, he said Israeli strikes often landed very close to the UN vehicles.

He said missions were precarious because Hizbollah fighters profited from the arrival of UN convoys as cover, to bring out launchers and fire rockets at Israel from near the vehicles.

Stokes said contacts with Israel to try and secure safe passage had not been encouraging, meaning access was almost worse than in other war zones, such as Chechnya.

"I've rarely seen people so committed, who are staying in those areas under really impossible conditions. They have no protection whatsoever," he said, adding that Lebanese aid workers were the backbone of the emergency aid effort.

"And they are the ones doing most of the work. It's not the international aid community, that's quite clear."

- REUTERS