Israel Cuts off "Umbilical Cord" for Lebanon Aid

GENEVA — The massive Israeli bombings in Lebanon have cut off the "umbilical cord" for relief supplies, raising the threat of a humanitarian disaster, international and UN agencies have warned as 40 more civilians were killed Friday, August 4, in a fresh Israeli massacre.

Israeli warplanes wrecked Friday four bridges along the coastal highway in the Christian heartland north of Beirut, cutting off almost the last land link with neighboring Syria.

"This was the main supply route for UNHCR, all our supplies come from Syria," said Jennifer Pagonis, a spokeswoman for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The UNHCR, backed by other UN relief agencies and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said the humanitarian crisis had deepened after the bombings.

"The road was badly damaged ... with the result that we cannot bring assistance from Arida, from Syria to Beirut," said Christiane Berthiaume, a spokeswoman for the UN's World Food Program (WFP).

A convoy due to carry medical supplies for 13,000 people from Syria on Saturday was also unable to move, the World Health Organization said.

A UN team was unable to evaluate the damage caused by the air raids because Israeli military forces did not give security clearance, known as "concurrence", according to Berthiaume.

"We did not have concurrence to be able to check the road from Beirut to Arida which is really the umbilical cord to bring relief inside Lebanon," she told reporters. The WFP said later it was checking possible alternative routes.

The bombings also halted the IOM's evacuation of Filipino and Sri Lankan migrant workers from the conflict in Lebanon.

A convoy of 720 migrants had been due to travel to Syria Friday.

Fewer than half the people in southern Lebanon who need food assistance had received help from the WFP, the agency's executive director James Morris warned during a visit to Syria.

One of three scheduled UN convoys carrying food, water and sanitation equipment was able to head to Jezzine, half-way between Beirut and the Israeli border, Friday.

Spread of Disease

Access to towns and villages in the heart of the conflict in southern Lebanon was again hampered, raising the threat of disease in the summer heat because of growing shortages of clean water.

"The situation is getting desperate. If shortages continue we may be witnessing outbreaks," Paul Sherlock, a UNICEF sanitation expert said in Lebanon.

"We fear bloody diarrhea, cholera and other epidemics. But what we fear most is bloody diarrhea, especially for children under five years old," he added.

UNICEF was pressing ahead with an immunization campaign for tens of thousands of displaced Lebanese children to prevent outbreaks of polio or measles, starting with 18,000 children around Beirut.

In Brussels, the EU's External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said the deteriorating humanitarian conditions made access essential, "now more than ever".

The UNHCR warned that aid was also needed in northern Lebanon.

"About 800,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon, mainly to the north and they will need assistance," Pagonis told journalists. About 130,000 of them were in public shelters.

Another 140,000 Lebanese were now in Syria, according to the UNHCR. Lebanese refugees have been fleeing at a rate of about 5,000 a day.

Fresh Massacre

Israeli bombardment killed at least 40 civilians in Lebanon on Friday as Tel Aviv is still under international diatribe for the grisly killing of 60 civilians, including 38 children, in the southern village of Qana.

One Israeli air strike hit a farm near Qaa, close to the Syrian border in the Bekaa Valley where workers, mostly Syrian Kurds, were loading plums and peaches onto trucks, local officials told Reuters.

They said 33 people were killed and 20 wounded.

Television footage showed bodies of what appeared to be farm workers lined up near the ruins of a small structure in fruit groves. Strewn nearby were fruit baskets.

"I was picking peaches when three bombs hit. Others were having lunch and they were torn to pieces," said Mohammad Rashed, one of the wounded.

Syria's official news agency said 17 of the dead were Syrian workers, five of them women.

It was one of the deadliest air strikes in 24 days of war.

More than 900 people were killed, third of whom were children, since Israel launched a four-week blitz on Lebanon on the claim of seeking to free two soldiers taken prisoner by the Islamic resistance movement Hizbullah.