Written By the Daily Star
On the first anniversary of the massacres
April 18, 1997
Saadallah Balhas
Saadallah Balhas (1939),a farmer from Siddiquine arrived at the Fijian headquarters on April 13 with his wife and 22 members of his family, including his 14 children. Saadallah was surrounded by his family in the Fijian officers’ mess as the shelling began.
" My sons were sitting in a row in front of me. A shell exploded in the room no more than a metre from where I was sitting. My children were all blown to pieces but because they were between me and the explosion, they saved my life. I was hit in the eye by a piece of shrapnel and my eardrums burst from the sound. I brushed my face to wipe away the blood and my eye fell out. My brother had been standing beside me but I could not find him, there was nothing left but meat. I could not even identify my children because there was nothing left of them. "
Fatmeh Balhas
Fatmeh Balhas (1971), has 33 members of her extended family with her in the Fijian headquarters. Her immediate family consists of her husband Kassem Khalil, 28, her brother Abdel Karim, 16, her son Hussein Khalil, 3, another son Hassan, 2, and her 17-day-old child Mohammed.
Fatmeh and her husband were holding their children when the second shell detonated.
"For a moment there was silence. The room was full of smoke and I could see nothing. I was dazed and numbed from the impact. It was only minutes later that I realized my children were dead and my husband as well. I was on my own."
| A stunned Lebanese soldier raises the corpse of a tiny child and holds it in front of the television cameras. It’s head has been ripped off by a piece of shrapnel. The child is 17-day-old Mohammed Khalil, Fatmeh Balhas’ son |  |
Adil Balhas
Adil Balhas (1944), Fatmeh’s father, was walking down the road towards the camp when the shelling began.
"The noise of the explosions was terrible. I knew that my daughter and her family were inside the camp but I ran towards the building opposite the camp’s gates to find shelter. Before I got there, I heard a thud in the road behind me. I turned and saw a shell had landed less than five metres away but it had not exploded. Instead it just rolled down the hill towards me."
Written By the Daily Star
On the first anniversary of the massacres
April 18, 1997
Mounira Taqi (1955), from Jbal el-Botoun, was in the officers’ mess, the same building as Fatmeh Balhas and Saadallah Balhas and their respective families. She was standing by the entrance with her husband Ibrahim, 43, when the shelling began.
"Most people seemed calm at first but after the first explosion in the camp everyone panicked and screamed. With the second explosion, a piece of shrapnel slashed my husband’s throat open and the last sound I heard him make was the rush of air emptying from his lungs as he collapsed. I had my seven-month-old baby in my arms but God helped him survive. I could not see my daughter (eight-year-old Dunia) because of the smoke. But as the smoke cleared, I was only able to recognise her from a piece of her pyjamas. She had been blown to pieces and there was nothing else left."
Ibrahim Taki, Mounira’s husband, is lying at the entrance of what remains of the officers mess. His corpse is partially hidden by a woollen blanket thrown over him by one of the
Fijian soldiers. His head is attached to his body only by a flap of flesh at the back of his neck and his head is stretched back at an absurd angle, fully displaying the ghastly wound. The officers’ mess is a charnel house. There are dozens of corpses lying in the terrible intimacy of death, many without arms, legs and heads. Pieces of human meat have been blasted onto the two-foot high wall and the supporting wooden columns, all that remains of the building after the corrugated iron walls and roof were blown away by the direct hit.
Ahmed Taki
Ahmad Taki (1974), Mounira’s son, had been invited to drink tea just prior to the shelling in a bunker sited between the officers’ mess, where his family were, and the conference room.
"I was watching people being injured and killed but I was unable to help them because of the shells and the shrapnel flying everywhere. I saw a badly injured Fijian soldier who was resting outside the shelter. It was only after the shelling had stopped and I saw my mother screaming that I knew my father was dead."
On the seoncd anniversary of the massacres
April 18, 1998
‘No one thought Lina would ever live. People are amazed’
Lina Taki, six years old at the time of the Qana massacre, was pulled from beneath a pile of corpses in the Fijian officers’ mess and pronounced dead.
Shrapnel from the blast that had killed her father, Ibrahim, and her eight-year-old sister, Dunia, had ripped into her head and arm.
Part of her brain was exposed and the surviving members of her family believed she too had been killed.
“They were dragging her free when someone saw her foot move. A doctor felt her pulse and she was still alive,” said Sana Taki, Lina’s aunt.
Lina was taken to hospital in Tyre, then Sidon. But the extent of her injuries was so severe that she was sent to Britain for four months for specialised treatment. Lina returned to her home in Jbal al-Btom, 5km from Qana, unable to speak and crippled in her right hand. So began a long period of recuperation at the hands of Lina’s family.
“It was like she had been born again and had to go through the learning process once more,” Sana said.
One year ago on the first anniversary of the massacre. Even then she had not learnt to speak and was a sombre, shy child. Today she has almost completely recovered.
“At first she couldn’t remember the names of people and objects. We had to teach her step by step. Anything she couldn’t remember she would point at and we would tell her the right name. No one thought she would ever live. People who saw Lina in Qana are amazed to see how she is now,” Sana said.
Lina has grown her hair longer in the last year and put on a little weight.
She still does not have the full use of her hand but her refusal to speak is only a symptom of child-like reticence with strangers in her home.
“She’s quite a little rascal,” said Lina’s grandmother Raoufi Tohme. “She’s always running around making mischief.”
But the emotional legacy of the massacre will remain with Lina for many more years.
“Her body is the right size for her age but she has the mind of someone younger. She has a lot of catching up to do. Even now she keeps asking for her sister Dunia and every time she hears (Israeli) planes overhead or the sound of explosions she runs screaming inside,” said Sana.
Lina has no choice but to receive her education at home as the local schools have refused to take her.
“She still has pieces of shrapnel in her head. The doctors didn’t dare to take them out. The schools are worried that she might have a seizure and that they’d be unable to cope,” said Sana.
“We expect them to hit the area harder than even during the April war before they leave,” said RaaiftiWritten By the Daily Star
On the second anniversary of the massacres
April 18, 1998
Two years on, tears still flow
‘I feel as though I can never smile. I’m always sad when I see it on TV’
Eight-year-old Ibrahim Bourji wants to play football for Ansar when he grows up. The bright-eyed and cheerful boy, who lost the toes on his right foot in the Qana massacre, refuses to let his disability thwart his ambition. “Ansar are the greatest,” he said. “I hope they win the World Cup one day.”
Ibrahim, and his sister Maryam, 14, and their cousins Zeinab, 13, and Zohra, 10, from Qana, were all orphaned in the massacre which ended the lives of 18 members of their extended family who were sheltering in the Fijian Unifil detachment’s conference room.
“When the shell landed Maryam flew out of her mother’s arms. I saw her flying through the air,” said Naila Ismail, the children’s aunt with whom they live.
Naila’s brother Hussein was killed in the attack and one of the most powerful television images of the massacre was a hysterical Naila grieving over Hussein’s dismembered corpse.
“The Israelis cut him in half with their shells,” she said.
Ibrahim and Maryam, who was badly burned when the conference room was engulfed in flames, were both sent to France for treatment. After spending three months in hospital, they stayed with a French family whom they had befriended.
“They used to treat us as one of the family,” said Maryam who received extensive plastic surgery and whose left arm is still badly scarred and unusable. " It was strange the first day we stayed with them but from the second day it was like I was at home " she said.
The French doctors insisted she required further treatment for her arm but after six months of being away from her siblings and village, Maryam said she just wanted to go home.
Maryam did not want to talk about the massacre and refused to be photographed but her sister Zeinab clearly recalled the horrific events that afternoon two years ago.
“Our mother told us to go to sleep when the shell warning came through. She said everything would be okay, but I knew she was just trying to reassure us,” Zeinab said.
When the Zionist shells began slamming into the compound, Zeinab ran out of the conference room and headed for the main gate.
“There was shrapnel everywhere and people screaming and running, One shell landed in front of me but it didn’t explode. A Fijian soldier told us to stay away from the shell in case it blew up. I ran out of the camp and into a civilian house where I stayed until the shelling had stopped. I feel as though I can never smile. I’m always sad when I see it on the television.”
Today, Zeinab and her sisters and cousins will visit the cemetery outside the gates of the Fijian battalion headquarters to pay their respects.
“I will bless the graves and read from the Koran for my parents,”
Like many of the younger children who survived the carnage, Ibrahim remembers nothing and said that he rarely discusses the massacre with his friends.
who is fighting to forget
Written By the Daily Star
On the second anniversary of the massacres
April 18, 1998
The Unifil Fijian battalion headquarters still retains the scars of the Zionist artillery bombardment two years ago. Nearly every building is pockmarked with shrapnel, and one was damaged so badly that the UN constructed a new base for the peacekeepers on a hill outside Qana.
The Fijians are due to begin relocating to the new headquarters next week. Only two Fijians currently serving with the battalion were present during the massacre.
Maj Mitieli Viniasi was the medical officer for the battalion and as such was forced to deal first-hand with the carnage after the shelling ended.
He said, “I had just finished a late lunch and was in my room when I heard rockets being fired. There was an immediate shell warning and I put on my flak jacket. I had just reached my office when the shelling started. At first it was outside the camp, but there was shrapnel flying through the air inside the base. Eleven of us ran to a bomb shelter. Six of us made it. It was full of civilians so we crouched by the entrance.”
After the shelling stopped, Viniasi had to put to one side his shock and horror to begin dealing with the casualties.
He said, “It was a terrible sight. I informed the CO, Col Wame Waqanivavalugi, of our situation. The soldiers were bringing the severely injured to me. There were people missing arms and legs with their intestines spilling onto the ground. There were 20 to 30 badly injured civilians for me to deal with straight away. After 14 years of medical practice I had never seen anything like it. It was very hard to cope but my team did an excellent job considering the situation we were in.”
Viniasi was speaking beside the site of the conference room, one of two buildings crammed with civilians which took direct hits. The conference room burned to the ground and has since, ironically, been transformed into a sturdy underground bomb shelter.
This is Viniasi’s third tour of duty in Lebanon, a country he and his colleagues consider their second home.
“The relations between us and the people of Qana are very good. The massacre has brought us all closer and even though our home is many thousands of miles away on the other side of the world, Lebanon is our second home,” he said.
But like the buildings of the battalion headquarters, Viniasi also still carries the scars of his experience.
“I don’t want to think about what happened any more. Even when I went home I tried to forget about it and I still am. No pictures, no videotapes, nothing. I want to leave it all behind me.”
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