Oct
4
2006
Beirut (Part II): The morning after
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The first part of this essay is the September 4 posting.
ON THE EVE of the ceasefire, a photographer in the Mayflower Hotel bar told me that in southern Beirut there are “places where it looks like Hiroshima.” He had been to a number of war zones, and he seemed a reasonable fellow, but this seemed to me a gross overstatement. Upon visiting the area several days later, however, I found it was not nearly the inflated piece of exaggeration I had assumed it to be.
Seventeen hours before the ceasefire, Israel fired 20 missiles in the span of two minutes in southern Beirut, leveling a complex of eight buildings. It was one of the places where, a few days later, I fired about 200 photographs in the span of two hours. Continue reading
Sep
4
2006
Beirut (Part 1): The eve of the ceasefire
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*To see a slideshow of the following photos, and of many more that I was not able include in the post, click here
IT WAS NOT your everyday airplane announcement: “Attention: due to bombings in Beirut, we will wait over the sea.” But the French military plane—which was loaded with pallets of humanitarian aid, two Handicap International employees, a Dutch embassy entourage, two journalists including myself, and a dozen armored French soldiers—must have only circled over the Mediterranean a few times. Twenty minutes later the C-130 touched down on one of the remaining intact strips at the Beirut airport. Only minutes after we had disembarked a plume of smoke mushroomed in the distance. The final day before the ceasefire—the 33rd day of Israeli air strikes—was not panning out to be a quiet one. Continue reading
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