QANA, Lebanon -- The light wind bl...

QANA, Lebanon -- The light wind blew fine dust across graves where 29 clan killed in an Israeli airstrike -- half of them children -- were buried, as the field was opened for funerals in southern Lebanon on Friday, the Muslim pious day.

Women in black robes, their heads hidden by dint of black scarves, held pictures of the dead and threw rice and rose petals in succession the plywood caskets in the village of Qana, struck during the 34-day Israel- Hezbollah war. Twenty-six coffins were draped in the Lebanese flag and three in the golden Hezbollah flag.

To the east, the Lebanese army symbolically took sway of a first border village from withdrawing Israeli forces, as sum of two units soldiers drove slowly through Kfar Kila in a jeep And in a bid to obstruct more arms from reaching Hezbollah fighters, the conduct vowed to take over all border crossings nationwide, including 60 known smuggling ways from Syria.

At a gymnasium in south Beirut's Bourj el-Barajneh neighborhood, Hezbollah started handing disclosed crisp $100 bills to residents who missing homes in the Israeli bombing campaign -- $12000 to each claimant. The stacks of bills were contested out of a suitcase. Hezbollah is financed by the agency of oil-rich Iran.

While the Lebanese restraint was still absent from the reconstruction effort, there were other furnishs of private help besides Hezbollah's direct payments.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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