Conflict in Lebanon

An Israeli attack razed this apartment building in Tyre, Lebanon. “I have seen all the wars but I’ve never seen a war like this in intensity,” says Fadl Chalak, president of the Council for Development and Reconstruction in Beirut.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Residents of Tyre rush to a multistory apartment building destroyed in heavy Israeli bombing. A cleric with ties to Hezbollah lived in the complex, but was not present at the time of the attacks. At least 12 people were badly injured, including children.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Residents of the Lebanese port city of Tyre rush to the site of an apartment building, said to be the home of a cleric with ties to Hezbollah, which was flattened in Israeli air strikes. A U.N. aid convoy reached the city with a supply of flour and medical kits.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Injured Lebanese civilians are brought to Jabal Amel Hospital in Tyre. Jets repeatedly struck the area around the city, identified by Israel as a major source of Hezbollah rocket launches. Dozens of fleeing civilians were caught in the attacks.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Smoke rises over the suburb of Dahiyeh in southern Beirut today, as Israel continued air strikes and shelling from warships on Hezbollah strongholds in the Lebanese capital. Israeli forces also bombed targets outside Sidon and around Tyre. Israel also struck Qana, from where it said Hezbollah fired rockets at Haifa.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Children shrink from the din around them as they attempt to flee the Lebanese city of Aitaroun, where more than 100 people have been trapped by blocked roads. On the second day of a temporary cease fire, hundreds fled homes and villages mostly destroyed by Israeli bombing.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

Residents of south Lebanon pack a vehicle to flee north. On one of the roads out, young boys were seen crammed into an open car trunk, and spotted cows crowded the back of a truck.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Residents carry the elderly and disabled through the rubble of Aitaroun as they attempt to leave.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

Libi Ibrahim cries out for help in the town of Bint Jbeil, Lebanon, where she had been drinking muddy water and was nearly deaf from the days of Israeli bombings. “God brought you,” she said. “Don’t leave me.”  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

The bodies of two boys are pulled from the rubble in Qana. A lieutenant colonel in the Lebanese army said of the Israeli air strike: “As a soldier, I know there are laws for war. This is a mass execution.”  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

The young and elderly were among those trapped in the city of Aitaroun, due to debris blocking the roads out of town. They gather in the city center to wait for transport.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

An Israeli tank rolls past a fire started by a Hezbollah rocket along the border with Lebanon. Officials say blazes have destroyed half a million pine trees in Israel.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

Israeli army firefighters work to put out the last fire still burning in Kiryat Shmona from Hezbollah rocket fire, started by a Hezbollah rocket.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

Israeli infantry reservists in southern Lebanon. Neither the military’s traditional skills as a modern armored force nor its ability to battle Palestinian militias has proved sufficient against the highly motivated, well-armed Hezbollah guerrillas.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

Israeli soldiers take cover in an apple orchard after coming under rocket fire on the Lebanese border at Metula. The unit was overseeing the rescue of a disabled tank when one of the tanks in the convoy was hit twice by Hezbollah rockets. No one was hurt in the incident. Photographed on July 31, 2006.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

Israeli soldiers move quickly as air-raid sirens sound in Kfar Giladi. It isn’t known whether the reservists who were killed in a rocket attack earlier in the day decided not to seek shelter, or did not know where to go after the alarms went off.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

Medics tend to an Israeli soldier near Kiryat Shemona. Israel said two soldiers were killed and 19 wounded. Hezbollah said it had crippled more than a dozen Israeli tanks.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

Israeli soldiers rest at a border staging area near Avivim, Israel, after returning from a week of fighting in Lebanon.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

An soldier comforts another as he cries after returning to the Israeli side of the border near Manara from the front lines early morning on Monday, Aug. 14, two hours before the 8:00 a.m. start of the cease fire.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

Lebanese protesters storm the United Nations offices in Beirut after the Qana tragedy. A Hezbollah lawmaker addressed the crowd, calling Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “persona non grata.”  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Thousands of protestors stormed the UN building in downtown Beirut hours after an Israeli air strike killed more than 50 refugees gathered in a basement in a home in Qana, Lebanon.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

A family makes their way through the rubble strewn streets looking for a way out of Aitaroun in southern Lebanon.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

Marwa Dakak looks at the bomb damaged remains of her bedroom in the Lebanese suburb of Dahieh.  (Wally Skalij / LAT)

Hassan Ammar, a news photographer, carries a woman through the rubble of what was once a street in Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon. The bomb-ravaged town is the ugly epicenter of the war between Israel and Hezbollah.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

Kati Martziano, 31, waits with family members in the stairwell of a bomb shelter in Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

Emergency response workers examine damage to an apartment building in Kiryat Shmona after a Hezbollah rocket attack.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

Rescue crews in Qana, Lebanon, remove the body of a child killed in an Israeli air strike on a house where two extended families had sought refuge in the basement.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

A woman grieves for five family members believed trapped under rubble in the town of Bint Jbeil, two miles from Ainata. Evacuees returned to look for victims and survivors.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

One of at least 14 bodies found in the rubble of an Ainata home is removed. The dead were neighbors gathered in the basement, trying to survive shelling from nearby hills. Ainata’s voters helped elect a Hezbollah representative to Lebanon’s parliament, but they say that militants were not present in town during the fighting and that homes should not have been targeted.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

More than thirty victims are prepared for a mass burial in Tyre, Lebanon  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

A traumatized family waits for transport from the heavily bombed town of Aitaroun, where at least a hundred people were trapped. On the second day of a temporary cease-fire, hundreds of people continued to flee their homes and villages, now mostly destroyed from the Israeli bombing.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

Evacuees outside a hotel turned shelter in Tyre load a child onto a bus bound for Sidon, farther up Lebanon’s coast. Thousands fleeing Israeli strikes have sought safety at the hotel.  (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Khadija Shifab, 80, looks at the rubble after Israeli rockets struck the town of Dahieh, a suburb of Southern Beirut.  (Wally Skalij / LAT)

A man looks up at a ruined apartment building in a Tyre neighborhood after Israeli bombing collapsed several structures in the southern Lebanese city. His son had an apartment in the area. It was unclear whether anyone was killed in the attack.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

Residents trying to escape the town of Aitaroun, pack into the trunk of a car as they attempt to flee the southern Lebanese city.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

Fatma Ayub cries out for food for her children after making to the Tebnine General hospital from Bint Jbeil, where she and her children had had little to eat for the past ten days.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

The bodies of those killed in the bombing of a building in Qana, Lebanon, are laid out in a hospital. The Israeli military said its forces were unaware that civilians were in the building.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

Lebanese soldiers label the coffins of more than 20 people, including some United Nations personnel, before temporary burial. Efforts to stop the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas have been stalled by differences among diplomats over whether to send in peacekeepers before a cease-fire is worked out.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

Mourners carry the bodies of three men killed in a Hezbollah rocket attack through the streets of northern Tarshikha in northern Israel.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

Family members gather to mourn the death of Amir Naim, 19, one of three men killed in the same rocket attack. The other men killed were Shnati Shnati and Muhamed Faor.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

In Qana, mourners hold photographs of relatives killed by Israeli air strikes. The town held some of the most elaborate funerals in southern Lebanon.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

A casket is lifted by men before burial in a mass tomb in Qana, Lebanon.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

Women grieve for loved ones at a mass tomb in Qana.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

Israeli soldiers carry the flag-draped coffin of Army reservist David Amar during his funeral in Kiryat Shmona in Northern Israel. Amar was killed just before the cease-fire agreement went into effect.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

Soldiers mourn the death of Liran Saadia, an Israeli soldier, and family members at a military funeral in Kiryat Shemona, near the border with Lebanon.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

Men carry the body of Albert Ben-Abu who was killed in a Hezbollah rocket attack in the Israeli town of Akko on the Mediterranean Sea. The funeral was held at a cemetary outside of Akko in northern Israel.  (Damon Winter / LAT)

A man in Tyre, Lebanon, watches as Israeli jets fly overhead. Israel dropped leaflets warning residents in southern Lebanon not to drive on roads anywhere south of the Litani River or risk being attacked.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

Linda Zribi lost her husband, Shimon, and daughter Mazal in a Hezbollah rocket attack in Acre, Israel.  (Damon WInter / LAT)

An Israeli soldier carrying a Hezbollah flag embraces a comrade after returning to the Israeli side of the border near the town of Menara about two hours before the start of the cease-fire.  (Damon WInter / LAT)

Israeli soldiers return to a staging area in the northern border town of Metulla  (Damon WInter / LAT)

Ali Tiba, 11, carries Hezbollah flags in Qana, Lebanon. A government official grudgingly praised the militant group. “At least they are on the ground helping,” he said. “If you call them at midnight, they come out to help. They are the government.”  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)