Mariam lost one of her sons who was a Hizbollah commander in the last war. She has not heard a word about her three grandchildren who also live in the south since the war started. She is desperately worried about them.

Leaving Mariam’s house, we are accosted by an old man who is frantically shouting at us. I know very little Arabic and he is holding one of those microphones to his throat that makes people with voice box problems sound like Metal Mickey. There is a serious communication problem but then a passerby who knows him tells both me and my guide, that he has something to show us in his house. Abou Yousef takes us to his living room to show us the present cause of his homelessness. One of Israel’s not very smart bombs has crashed through two walls and sits unexploded in the remains of his coffee table. Then outside there is a bang.

We venture out and are told that three children playing in the rubble have trodden on some unexploded ordinance. Luckily they have detonated a fuse rather than a bomb, so are burnt rather than dead. As they are brought screaming to one of the buildings that are still standing we are asked not to take pictures. We leave to give them and the local medics some space.

For the Israelis, this little town was a top priority. They claim that the Hizbollah unit that kidnapped their soldiers came from here. On July 21st, hundreds of Israeli soldiers attacked the town. Over the next 3 weeks five major battles were fought here. Local armed communists and veterans of previous wars swelled the ranks of the resistance. All worked in cooperation with Hizbollah as a popular resistance. The fighting was intense street-to-street – sometimes hand-to-hand – with the Israelis often relying on air strikes to cover their tracks as they retreated. The town had some very efficient RPG teams who took out two Israeli tanks and one bulldozer. The Israelis have not admitted how many soldiers they lost other than admitting that ‘Several were killed including one commanding officer’. They have also claimed that that they killed 50 Hizbollah fighters. Everyone in the town disputes this without exception. They say that 8 Hizbollah fighters died. We are shown their temporary grave. A small trench big enough to accommodate around 8 bodies.

The town of Aita al-Shabb was never taken by the world’s fifth most powerful army. This is a story that has been told again and again across South Lebanon.

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