Lebanese flee Israeli blitz

SIDON, Lebanon — The electricity was cut in the first days of the war. Then their supply of candles ran out. Huddled in their house in the southern Lebanese village of Sidiqin, without access to television or radio, the Balhas family didn't know what was happening or why, only that the bombing was getting closer, and more intense.

At first light Saturday, after huge blasts shook their home overnight, they jumped into their car and joined an accelerating exodus of people fleeing the Israeli onslaught in southern Lebanon,

"It felt like the end of everything," said Mahmoud Balhas, 29, shortly after he arrived at a school housing refugees in the port town of Sidon, south of Beirut, with his wife and four children. "We thought everyone in our village was going to die."

With Israel intensifying its squeeze on southern Lebanon, tens of thousands of Lebanese are scrambling to leave the border region, navigating past the huge craters and burned vehicles littering the roads in an effort to reach safety. A snaking line of cars, white sheets fluttering from their windows and antennas, wound its way northward, following back roads and side streets because the main highways have been bombed.

More than 35,000 people have poured into Sidon in recent days, and others are heading for the mountains above Beirut, swelling the populations of towns and villages there. Altogether, more than 500,000 people have been displaced since the start of the 11-day-old conflict, according to the United Nations.

For Mohammed al-Dib, 42, who paid $200 for a taxi to take him, his wife and three children to Sidon from Bazouriyeh, east of Tyre, it was a trip from hell.

"... All along the way there are destroyed cars and people burned in their cars ... " he said as he reached Sidon. "Some people would prefer to die one time in their village and not many times coming here on the road, because every 1 or 2 kilometers you hear the planes and bombs, and it was hell."

Sidon, a pretty fishing town popular with tourists, has not been left untouched. Air strikes have destroyed several gas stations and the looping overpasses connecting the town to the main north-south highway. The port was struck, and so was the Funny World amusement park. Many Sidon residents also have fled elsewhere, leaving streets virtually deserted.

But as the focus of the conflict narrows on the strip of southern Lebanon from which Hezbollah has been launching attacks, it is the towns and villages there, home to an estimated 400,000 people, that are bearing the brunt of the attacks.

Israel's goal is to empty the border region, said al-Dib, who believes 90 percent of the people in his village have fled. Several apartment buildings housing civilians have been hit, and "tens of people" are still buried in the rubble, he said.

Shortly after reaching Sidon, Balhas called neighbors and learned that his home had received a direct hit an hour and a half after the family fled. His father-in-law, who had refused to travel with them because he wanted to tend his chickens, had been taken to hospital in Tyre with shrapnel injuries.

"He wouldn't come because of the chickens," said Balhas. "Now the chickens are dead, and he is in the hospital."

Meanwhile, with fears of a humanitarian crisis growing, Israel opened up its blockade of Lebanon's ports to allow the first shiploads of aid to arrive.

In Beirut, a steady stream of foreign nationals lined up Saturday to board ships and planes that would take them away from the violence.

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.