Their three other children -- Mohammed, 22, Fatima, 19, and Malak, 16 -- were killed. So were Ali Rmeity's parents, his three brothers and two sisters. His brother's family, who lived in the same building, also died.

In total, 15 of Rmeity's relatives were killed, according to hospital officials and relatives. Ali so far had only been told that his mother had died.

Rmeity said his children had been scared for days and wanted to leave their apartment even though the district of Chiah so far had been spared from Israeli airstrikes. Friends repeatedly told him to come stay with them.  

BEIRUT (WaPo) Aug. 8 -- Then the war came to Al Chiyah.

In the jumbled streets with their little sandwich shops and decrepit walls, where laborers and clerks raised their families, a pair of missiles fired from an Israeli warplane Monday evening streaked down and destroyed three apartment buildings.

The blasts crumpled cars like accordions. Apartment buildings collapsed into piles of rubble. Windows shattered for blocks around. The steel shutters of storefronts buckled.

Suddenly, the death and destruction of Lebanon's war invaded a mixed quarter of southern Beirut where Christian and Muslim neighbors had thought they were safe from the lethal standoff between Hezbollah and the Israeli armed forces.

The nearby suburbs called Dahiya, where Hezbollah is the de facto government, have been pounded repeatedly by Israeli jets since the war began July 12. Most of the residents have fled, leaving the streets empty except for stray dogs and Hezbollah cadres. But Al Shiyah, where Shiite Muslims live comfortably with Christians and give their loyalty to the Amal party of parliament speaker Nabih Berri, was not expecting to get hit.

Lebanese civil defence workers remove the body of a victim from the wreckage of a building in Beirut that was hit by an Israeli raid. The attack took place on Chiyah, a residential neighbourhood in Beirut. REUTERS/Issam Kobeisy

Smoke billows between buildings in the southern town of Khiam, Lebanon, following Israeli airstrikes. Israeli artillery pounded villages and hills throughout south Lebanon while a complete curfew was imposed on any civilians still trapped in the heart of the war zone. AP Photo/Lotfallah Daher

MY DIARY ::
Notorius Torture Prison of Khiam Destroyed ¶ UN Bunker Strike on Hilltop near Khiam

JERUSALEM (AP) Aug 9 — Israel's Security Cabinet approved a wider ground offensive in south Lebanon that was expected to take 30 days as part of a new push to badly damage Hezbollah, a Cabinet minister said.

The Security Cabinet authorized troops to push to the Litani River some 18 miles from the Israel-Lebanon border. Currently, some 10,000 soldiers are fighting Hezbollah in a four-mile stretch from the frontier.

The proposed operation was expected to take 30 days, Cabinet minister Eli Yishai said. However, an internationally backed cease-fire was expected to be imposed well before then.

"The assessment is it will last 30 days. I think it is wrong to make this assessment. I think it will take a lot longer," he said.

A Lebanese man who identified himself as Hassan Harissa, a 50-year-old carpenter, lights up a cigarette as he walks on the rubble of apartment buildings destroyed during the four-week Israeli forces offensive, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon. AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis

The decision, approved by nine ministers with three abstaining, gave authorization to Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to order the wider offensive and to decide its timing. However, it did not obligate them to act.