"There is something fundamentally wrong with a war where there are more dead children than armed men. That has to stop,"
UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland (see AFP below for link)
"Israel rejects UN aid truce call" is today's main international story on the war, as the BBC puts the headline, this provided in case you're trapped inside the US mainstream media bubble. The Guardian, Reuters, and France's AFP have similar headlines on their main Lebanon war survey stories. Fox and CNN do not.
The BBC story's first three sentences follow (the link is in the press review section below):
Israel has rejected a United Nations call for a three-day truce in southern Lebanon, as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returns to the region.
The UN says children, elderly and disabled are trapped and supplies are short after two weeks of fighting.
But an Israeli spokesman said there was no need for a truce as they had opened a humanitarian corridor to the area.
As for the civilian dead, the official figures on the numbers of Lebanese killed haven't been passed on to us by the mainstream press, international or U.S.. So, I will have to extrapolate from yesterday's numbers provided by Fox (438 Lebanese killed) and the Guardian (382 Lebanese civilians killed). Averaging today's Fox (445) and Reuters (462) figures, my math looks like this: 382 times 453.5 divided by 438 equals 395.52.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies accepts donations for Lebanon at www.ifrc.org. The United Nations also has a fundraising effort which you can learn more about at http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
UK Guardian
I looked at the five stories about the crisis on Guardian's internet front page, and found no statistics on the numbers of people who have been killed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
FoxNews
At least 445 Lebanese have been killed in the fighting, that broke out July 12 after Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in a cross-border raid. Most casualties have been civilians, and some estimates range as high as 600 dead.
Thirty-three Israeli soldiers have died in fighting, and Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel have killed 19 civilians, the Israeli army said. The army said Israeli troops have killed about 200 Hezbollah guerrillas, but Hezbollah has reported only 35 losses.
http://www.foxnews.com/...
Reuters
Reuters main story is about Tony Blair's Lebanon stance, and the second article, quoted below, does not separate military and civilian casualties.
At least 462 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Lebanon in the conflict. Fifty-one Israelis have been killed.
http://today.reuters.com/...
BBC
The UN says some 600 people have been killed by Israeli action in Lebanon, of which about a third were children.
Fifty-one Israelis, including at least 18 civilians, have been killed, mostly by Hezbollah rockets.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/...
CNN
Lebanese Internal Security Forces said Saturday that 421 people have been killed and 1,661 have been wounded in Lebanon since the attacks began.
Israeli officials said Friday that 52 Israelis -- 33 soldiers and 19 civilians -- have died and 1,233 Israelis -- 110 soldiers and 1,123 civilians -- have been wounded in the fighting between Hezbollah forces and Israel.
http://www.cnn.com/...
AFP
[UN humanitarian coordinator Jan] Egeland cited Lebanese health ministry figures saying that more than 600 people had been killed since Israel launched its offensive on July 12 following Hezbollah's capture of two soldiers in a deadly cross-border raid.
He said at least one third of the casualties were children.
"There is something fundamentally wrong with a war where there are more dead children than armed men. That has to stop," he said.
An AFP count has put the death toll at around 438, the vast majority of them civilians.
http://www.afp.com/...
