Bulldozers began removing hills of rubble in Beirut's southern suburb on Tuesday as Hizbollah teams surveyed the damage and contacted residents to compensate them for the property destroyed during the war with Israel.
BEIRUT: Bulldozers began removing hills of rubble in Beirut's southern suburb on Tuesday as Hizbollah teams surveyed the damage and contacted residents to compensate them for the property destroyed during the war with Israel.
Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said the guerrilla group would immediately start repairing bomb-damaged homes and pay a year's rent and other costs to help the owners of about 15,000 destroyed homes across the country.
"We know that Sayyed never says a word without making good on it. Hizbollah told us to log our details with them for compensation," said 46-year-old Adnan Mansour, standing in front of his destroyed home and two stores, where a soft drinks fridge and an Iranian flag only remain.
"Thank God we are okay. Money comes and goes," said Mansour, his hands and clothes covered with dust. His son Abdel-Rahman stood beside him, wrapping himself with Hizbollah's yellow flag.
Their home was bombed on Sunday in the last Israeli raid on the Shi'ite Muslim suburb before a UN-brokered truce to end the 34-day war took effect the following day. Smoke was still rising from another building nearby, hit in the same strike.
Scores of people sifted with bare hands through slabs of concrete where their homes and businesses once stood, salvaging vacuum cleaners, fridges, computers and family photo albums.
Hizbollah fighters, armed with assault rifles and holding walkie-talkies around their hips manned roadblocks leading to an area that once housed the group's headquarters and main offices flattened by repeated Israeli raids.
"This (reconstruction) workshop starts now. We are at the service of everybody to provide suitable housing and suitable furniture," Sayyed Hashem Safieddin, head of Hizbollah's Executive Council, told reporters during a tour in the area.
While many Shi'ites appear to support Hizbollah, some other Lebanese blame the group for dragging their country into a devastating war that killed more than 1,100 people, mostly civilians, and cost billions of dollars in damages. At least 157 Israelis also died in the conflict.
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