They put the 86 corpses into plain wood caskets. Many were just big enough to fit a small child
Dozens of dead buried in temporary mass grave until fighting ends
By Clancy Chassay in Tyre
22.07.2006 The Guardian
Empty wood caskets, which had been neatly stacked by a large white freezer truck – one of two being used to store the bodies of many of those killed during Israel’s bombardment of south Lebanon – were now being filled; 86 of the 150 corpses in the truck were to be buried in the afternoon.
[…]
Watching the burial was Qasim Shaala, the chief medic at Tyre’s Red Cross offices. “Most of the casualties are women and children,” he said. “They [Israel] are not letting us save them. Ambulances aren’t allowed into areas after they are shelled.”
For the past four days, Mr Shaala and his team of 50 volunteers have been ferrying people from the Red Cross centre in Tibnin, near the border with Israel, to Tyre. Earlier that day Mr Shaala described the dangers and difficulties his ambulance workers had faced.
“We are being bombed as we try to get to the victims, and when we try to bring them back. Many of the roads are destroyed so we have to take detours through the orchards and farmland.”