Displaced Lebanese race bulldozers to recover keepsakes

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2006

HARET HREIK, United States (AFP) — In the ruins of Haret Hreik, a southern Beirut suburb, Shiite families tried to save keepsakes before they were lost amid debris being cleared away by bulldozers and dump trucks. They stressed, however, that their neighbors' treasures are off limits, echoing a local militia official who compared their spirit with scenes from a catastrophic hurricane in New Orleans a year earlier.

"This is not Katrina," said Ibrahim, a Hezbollah press escort who insisted that there had been "no pillaging in Lebanon". A man who gave his name as Hassan climbed on the rubble of what used to be a nine-storey building located behind the former Hezbollah television station Al Manar, which was completely destroyed by Israeli air strikes. He displayed the day's...