MONTREAL (AFP) – Ali El-Akhras wanted to introduce his children to his grandparents in Lebanon to show how three generations had thrived in Canada, but the carnage his parents once fled ended the trip and their lives.
An Israeli air strike destroyed the family home in Aitaroun in southern Lebanon this past week, killing the Montreal pharmacist, his wife and children, as well as his mother and an uncle, relatives said.
“We’re all devastated. It’s a shock,” Walid El-Akhras, 21, a relative who works at the family grocery in Montreal told AFP on Monday.
All were Canadians with dual Lebanese citizenship. Three of their Lebanese relatives also died in the blast, he said. Canadian officials have confirmed seven family members died but relatives say eight were killed.
Israeli forces have pounded targets in Lebanon since the middle of last week after the Hezbollah militant group captured two Israeli soldiers and began launching its own barrage of rockets into Israel.
On Monday, customers offered their condolences to the family. One wholesaler dropping off goods said: “It’s senseless.”
Ali El-Akhras had graduated from Montreal University and worked for the popular pharmacy chain Jean Coutu in the city’s Cote-des-Neiges district.
He had scrimped and saved to afford to bring his four children, aged one to eight years old, to Lebanon and introduce them to relatives for the first time, his sister Mayssoun El-Akhras told reporters at a press conference in Montreal.
“He wanted to return because the country was for a while peaceful … but they died as they slept, they burned to death in the same room,” she said, evoking images and sounds of the bombs their parents “had fled 35 years ago which finally caught up to them.”
Leb-Canadian family wiped out
One family’s story — I’m sure there are others:
I wonder if the high proportion of foreign nationals in Lebanon (if you add up the numbers provided by the UK, US, Canadian and Australian authorities alone, it’s several hundred thousand) will make the impact of this conflict on civilians more “real” to outside observers and to those who see what’s going on as ritual bloodletting between Israel and Hezbollah. One might also hope that the strong presence of foreign citizens would put pressure on Israel to avoid hitting civilians. Thus far, it doesn’t look like it, according to this snippet from ABC:
“MATT BROWN: When Israel renewed its bombing of Beirut overnight, the bombs got even closer. And in the early hours of this morning, Israel bombed two lorries it said were carrying missiles near Tania Carpinelli’s flat and she fled with her son in a taxi to the Syrian border. No one had told her that at that very moment, the Australian Embassy was organising another bus convoy out to Syria. The Australian Foreign Minister says he’s confident hundreds more can be evacuated by ship tomorrow. But Alexander Downer says Israel has refused to allow a short ceasefire, or provide a safe corridor, to move Australian tourists trapped in southern Lebanon.
ALEXANDER DOWNER, FOREIGN MINISTER: The Israelis have so far said that this was a war zone – that they wouldn’t agree to our requests at this time or to the requests of other countries – Americans, Canadians, British and so on – that they didn’t want to allow Hezbollah to either consolidate or escape from that part of the country.
MATT BROWN: More than 200 Lebanese have already been killed in this conflict. As the foreigners flee, the Lebanese are also fleeing, and normally bustling Beirut is being reduced to a something of ghost town.
MAN: All I care about is that I don’t play the price for somebody else’s crime. They are innocent people. “
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2006/s1690076.htm
some friends of mine just opened up this website to try to coordinate aid and help toward the lebanese people. check it out:
http://www.saveleb.org“ rel=”nofollow”>http://www.saveleb.org
It appears the Israelis did relent and give Western governments windows/safe passage to get their citizens out. The Americans were going to have their citizens pay for their own passage (while escaping bombs their tax dollars paid for…nice) but the efforts of Lebanese-American republicans in Congress appear to have succeeded in waiving that.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1823454,00.html
Being a Canadian, I was certainly sadden and shocked to hear a family had persihed in the attack against Lebanon, I’ve been glued to the war ever since it stated and know that other Canadians are still stuck there. I’m really hoping they get out of there soon. So sad……….