Seven die in Israeli 'revenge' raid

THE SLAUGHTER at Nabatea was not on the scale of Tel Aviv. Only one-third of the number of victims in Dizengoff Street was blown to pieces by the Israelis in the countryside round this little market town. But no foreign journalists turned up to the wrecked home where five of the seven dead were cut down by an Israeli tank shell filled with steel arrows.

The tank is still there, a Merkava, clearly visible from the outskirts of Nabatea, perched next to a concrete bunker. The home of Kassem Bassal's sister is still pin- cushioned with 4cm flechette arrows, each with three fins, that burst from the tank's 120mm shell. You have only to see the depth of concrete the arrows penetrated to know what they did to Kassem Bassal and his nephew, Hussein, 14, to Rabiah Attawi and his first cousin Habib and to old Mrs Zeinab al-Haj Ali as-Sabah. All were Shia Muslims.

They were cut down within hours of the Hamas bombing in Dizengoff Street and the people of Nabatea are in no doubt that the Israelis were taking their revenge. The Lebanese Foreign Minister, Fares Bweiz, said that he believed the 'unjustified' shelling was a direct response to the Tel Aviv carnage, 'even though Lebanon is not involved'.

The flechette canister round - the shell pieces I gathered were clearly marked 'FUZE ET (Electronically timed) M120' with Hebrew script on the casing - is a ruthless, anti-personnel weapon, specially designed for the Merkava tank. I found hundreds of the tiny arrows that sprayed from the shell around the Bassal house, which was located in the northern suburb of Nabatea.

Zeinab al-Haj Ali was the last to die, of terrible wounds, as she lay in a hospital bed yesterday, although the first to be killed in the Israeli bombardment were two 20-year- old Christian girls, Janette Shafawi and Angel Shadid. They were struck by another tank round as they picked olives in a field near the neighbouring village of Barti.

According to Mohamed Bassal, Kassem's cousin, the shelling began without warning. 'There had been no guerrilla attacks before the bombardment - the usual reason the Israelis shell our towns,' he said. 'Kassem was in the house when the first shell hit it and he took his sister and their two children to safety. There were several more shells - they seemed to be aimed at the house - and only after a lull of 45 minutes did the family venture back to look at the damage. That's when the shell with the nails inside exploded.'

The Israeli tank crew must have seen the men and women near the house.

Although it was dusk, they would have been able to see through binoculars that they were unarmed and that all were in civilian clothes. Kassem Bassal was a sergeant in the regular Lebanese army but was off duty and was wearing jeans when he was killed. His brother-in-law was a well-known local trader and the other dead had no paramilitary links, although the Hizbollah guerrilla movement regularly attacks Israeli occupation troops east of Nabatea and has members living in the town.

'When we reached Kassem and the others, they were finished,' Mohamed Bassal said. 'The whole of the front of Kassem's body had holes in it - he was like a sieve. What happened here was a crime and a tragedy because there was no reason for this act. Why does the whole world get into uproar when an Israeli soldier is kidnapped and killed but then does nothing when innocent people are killed here by Israeli shells?'

Yesterday morning, as relatives prepared to bury the old woman, Hizbollah claimed it carried out an attack on an Israeli patrol inside southern Lebanon and that four salvos of rockets had been fired into Israel, damaging an empty house.

It was a warning from Hizbollah to the Israelis that they should stop shelling the villages. From the Israeli occupation zone came reports of Israeli troop reinforcements. Yesterday afternoon, Israeli jets were flying low over the skies of Nabatea. 'Tension,' as Beirut state radio announced with some discretion, 'remains high in southern Lebanon.'

(Photograph omitted)