Israeli Attack Shatters Life of Ambulance Driver

Abbas Jihah recalls hearing a powerful, loud whistling noise, and in an instant his life was shattered forever.

In that split second, the ambulance he was driving, packed with at least 12 people, was picked up with sickening force by an Israeli rocket fired from a helicopter hovering overhead. The vehicle was hurled 20 yards off the road, into the front room of a house.

Hysterical, but alive, Jihah turned to see his wife, Mona, and their three daughters, Zaina, 10, Hannan, 3, and Miriam, 2 months old, all mortally wounded. He instinctively grabbed the infant and the 10-year-old, half of whose face was burned and blown away, and ran down the road screaming for help.

“I was lost,” the 28-year-old father said Tuesday, speaking in dull tones three days after the tragedy. “My family right there in front of me was dying. . . . I wish I could be dead along with them.”

About 40 Lebanese civilians have been killed since Israel began its offensive in this country Thursday in reaction to Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel that have killed one Israeli and wounded at least 40 others in the last week. But Saturday’s attack on the ambulance near a U.N. checkpoint just south of Tyre was among the most horrific.

By coincidence, it was videotaped by a journalist who was at the checkpoint, and the scenes of Jihah clutching his dying children were broadcast around the world. Why would a clearly marked ambulance be attacked?

Israel’s explanation came within hours Saturday: The attack on Jihah’s ambulance, government officials said, was not an accident. It was targeted because its driver was a “known Hezbollah activist” and the vehicle was known to ferry Hezbollah members.

Although it is impossible to determine for certain, people familiar with Jihah and the attack, including U.N. personnel based in Tyre, do not believe Israel’s claim. No weapons were found in the vehicle.

Neighbors from his village of Mansouri, population 5,000--many of its residents are now sheltering at the U.N. compound in Tyre--laughed dismissively when asked about the allegation, describing Jihah as a poor vegetable farmer who was only going from place to place to pass out bread.

“Everybody in the village knows everybody,” said Mohammed Shekh, a schoolteacher from Mansouri. “There is no Hezbollah, especially in this village. Everybody is just looking to feed his family.”

In a makeshift bomb shelter in Tyre where he has taken refuge with his brothers and his two sons, Jihah was found Tuesday lying on a blanket on the floor. He denied ever having any links with Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim group responsible for launching missiles at Israeli border towns.

“If Israel thought I was involved with Hezbollah, then they are lying,” Jihah said. “If I was with Hezbollah, there is no way I would have been in the ambulance with my family. I would not have taken that chance. It would have been much too dangerous.”

On Saturday, Jihah said, he was asked by a fellow volunteer to help Tyre’s ambulance service deliver food supplies to nearby villages.

After finishing one run, he went back to Tyre to get more food and take an injured man to a hospital.

Then, on the radio, he said, he heard a warning issued by Israel in Arabic that all residents of Mansouri and two other villages should leave within four hours. He drove the ambulance straight home to his village nine miles south of Tyre and quickly gathered his family.

They formed an ungainly convoy. His brother Hussein, who has 20 children, put his family into a red pickup truck. Then came Jihah in the ambulance, followed by a third brother on a motorbike and a fourth brother driving a tractor.

They had seen the Israeli helicopters but did not realize they were being followed, Jihah said. Then, 50 yards after the vehicle passed the U.N. checkpoint manned by Fijian soldiers, the rocket came.

“All of a sudden, everything just shattered,” Jihah recalled. Besides his four family members, a woman and a little girl riding in the ambulance were killed.

In Jerusalem on Tuesday, Israeli government spokesman Uri Dromi expressed regret at the deaths of innocent passengers but repeated the assertion that Jihah was an activist in Hezbollah whose vehicle was “known to run back and forth between Hezbollah positions.”

“After we issued the warning to the population to stay away from Hezbollah, we assumed that if people were in the car . . . they were also associated with Hezbollah,” Dromi said. “Unfortunately, these were women and kids. We’re sorry for the loss of life.”

The relatively low number of deaths in Lebanon after nearly a week of intense bombardments shows that Israel is not targeting civilians, he said.

The only time Jihah expressed anger during a 45-minute interview was when he was asked his opinion of Israel. Calling the Israelis “terrorists and murderers,” he said he wants Israel to “leave our land alone so people can live in peace and so we have no killings back and forth. Each will live in peace, over here and over there.”