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Once sealed, the coffins were placed along the length of a wall outside the hospital each underneath a large black painted number. Several hours passed before they were finally ferried to a nearby field where two trenches had been dug to serve as a mass grave. It will not be their last resting place. They will lie there until the fighting subsides and the bodies can be exhumed and handed over to their families. The caskets, many only big enough to hold a small child were laid in two large trenches, less than 100 metres long, two metres wide and no more than a metre deep.

Watching the burial was Qasim Shaala, the chief medic at Tyre's Red Cross offices. "Most of the casualties are women and children," he said. "They [Israel] are not letting us save them. Ambulances aren't allowed into areas after they are shelled."

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Condoleezza Rice has described the plight of Lebanon as a part of the "birth pangs of a new Middle East" and said that Israel should ignore calls for a ceasefire.

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