Fragile Calm Amid Lebanon, Israel Truce04/17 06:21

   A fragile calm settled over parts of Lebanon on Friday as a 10-day ceasefire 
brokered by the United States took hold between Israel and Hezbollah, prompting 
thousands of displaced families to begin the journey home -- even as 
uncertainty, destruction and Israeli warnings against going back to parts of 
southern Lebanon clouded their return.

   BEIRUT (AP) -- A fragile calm settled over parts of Lebanon on Friday as a 
10-day ceasefire brokered by the United States took hold between Israel and 
Hezbollah, prompting thousands of displaced families to begin the journey home 
-- even as uncertainty, destruction and Israeli warnings against going back to 
parts of southern Lebanon clouded their return.

   By early morning, cars were backed up for kilometers on the route leading 
south to the damaged Qasmiyeh bridge over the Litani River, a key crossing 
linking the southern coastal city of Tyre to the north. Vehicles piled high 
with mattresses, suitcases and salvaged belongings crept forward through a 
single reopened lane, hastily repaired after an Israeli airstrike just a day 
earlier.

   Drivers heading back to their villages along coastal highways cheered each 
other, flashed victory signs and exchanged blessings.

   The latest Israel-Hezbollah war displaced more than a million people. 
Despite warnings from Lebanese officials that they should not immediately 
attempt to return to their homes, many began moving toward southern Lebanon in 
the hours after the ceasefire was declared. The truce appeared to be largely 
holding overnight.

   In southern villages like Jibsheet, a trickle of residents returned to 
flattened apartment blocks and streets littered with chunks of concrete, 
twisted aluminum shutters and dangling electrical wires.

   "I feel free being back," said Zainab Fahas, 23. "But look they destroyed 
everything -- the square, the houses, the shops, everything."

   Many did not believe that their ordeal was really over.

   "Israel doesn't want peace," said Ali Wahdan, 27, a medic walking on 
crutches over the rubble of the emergency services' headquarters in Jibsheet. 
He was badly wounded in an Israeli airstrike that hit the building without 
warning during the first week of the war.

   "I wish it were different," he said. "But this war will continue."

   In the neighborhood of Haret Hreik in Beirut's southern suburb, entire 
buildings had been reduced to rubble after weeks of intense Israeli strikes. 
Ahmad Lahham, 48, waved the yellow Hezbollah flag standing on a mountain of 
rubble that used to be his apartment building, which had also housed a branch 
of Hezbollah's financial arm, Al-Qard Al-Hassan.

   "We are at the service of the fighters," said Lahham, pledging his loyalty 
to the group.

   He praised Iran and said its pressure in its talks with the U.S. led to the 
truce, condemning Lebanon's direct talks with Israel.

   "Only the Iranians stood with us, no one else," he said, calling Lebanon's 
leaders "the leadership of shame."

   A local government official in Haret Hreik said Israel struck the 
neighborhood 62 times over the last six weeks.

   "We've been able to clear up the rubble of the partially damaged buildings, 
but for those destroyed, we will need special equipment," Sadek Slim, the 
neighborhood's deputy mayor, told a press briefing.

   The area was gridlocked with traffic, with people coming back to check on 
their homes and Hezbollah supporters zooming on scooters, waving the group's 
flag.

   Meanwhile, in Al-Najda al Shaabiya Hospital in the southern Lebanese city of 
Nabatiyeh, officials there said Thursday was one of the heaviest days of 
Israeli strikes since this latest Israel-Hezbollah war began.

   Hospital Director Mona Abou Zeid said the wounded continued arriving from 
nearby Israeli strikes until around an hour after the ceasefire technically 
took effect at midnight.

   Among those wounded in the bombardment on Nabatiyeh Thursday was 33-year-old 
Mahmoud Sahmarani, who said he stepped outside his home to buy some charcoal 
for his shisha water pipe when an Israeli strike hit his five-story building, 
killing his father and cousin as they were peeling potatoes for lunch. All that 
remains of his apartment is rubble, leaving him and the rest of his family 
homeless.

   "Israel should have withdrawn from Lebanon," he said from his hospital bed, 
his left eye swollen shut and his head swaddled in bandages. "If we don't get 
them out, they will continue to kill us."