Desolate Pakistanis return from nightmare in Beirut

Traumatised by the Israeli bombardment of Beirut, a few exhausted Pakistanis arrived home yesterday having first fled to the safety of Syria to catch flights out of the Middle East. "The city was like hell," Rubina Kanwar, a housewife in her late thirties, said as she shepherded her infant son and daughter through the throng waiting at Islamabad airport's arrival gate.

Fear for the safety of her husband, a shopkeeper still stranded in Beirut, mingled with anger at Israel, as the woman recounted her harrowing experience.

"We, especially my kids, were so scared of Israeli bombing. There was no safe place to live, nothing to eat," she said. "Please pray for our brothers and their victory against the Zionist forces, the people left there must be evacuated. You can't live there," Mrs Kanwar said.

Around 38 Pakistanis have made it home so far, but Sajjad Haider Khan, second secretary at Pakistan's embassy in Damascus, told Reuters that there were another 60 in Syria and the embassy was making arrangements for their evacuation.

He said at least 500 Pakistan nationals were living in Lebanon before the bombing began, but there would have been many more illegal immigrants and he had no idea how many were still stranded there. Mohammad Shahid who worked for a laundry in southern Lebanon, near the Israeli border, recalled the wave of attacks as he passed through Beirut.

"There was a chaos. Everybody was trying to find shelter. Israeli warplanes and forces were targeting every place. They hit each building several times. The city was a graveyard," Mr Shahid said on reaching Islamabad.

Other evacuees flew into the southern city of Karachi, desolated by what they had seen and what they had lost.

"It was worse than a nightmare. It was terrible," Mirza Sattar Beig, a goldsmith, said as he stood fatigued with the two hold-alls he and his Lebanese wife had escaped with.

"I saw dead bodies on streets that couldn't be taken because of the continuous air strikes. Dead bodies of children and women," said Mr Beig, telling how he and his wife travelled three days without proper food or water to reach Syria.

"God thanks I am safe now but my home back there is destroyed. Everything is finished."