Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor of The Times, describes the scene in the southern Lebanese village of Qana, where 26 civilians killed in an Israeli air strike during the recent conflict were buried together today:

"There have been mass burials across south Lebanon today, where they've collected many of the bodies of those killed in the fighting. The biggest, of course, is in the village of Qana, where I've spent most of the day.

"They brought up the bodies of 26 civilians, men, women and children, and four Hezbollah fighters for a ceremony that was very carefully choreographed by Hezbollah. The coffins were made of cheap woodchip but each of them was draped in a Lebanese flag then carried in a procession through town with a man of the back of a flatbed lorry chanting and getting the crowd to chant back. They were chanting in praise of Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and condemning Israel and America.

"At the moment, I'm standing in an olive grove where they have cleared a space for the graves, near the house where the villagers were killed. They're bringing down the coffins now, I can see them taking down the coffins and the caller is reciting Muslim prayers. Al-Manar, the Hezbollah TV station, is broadcasting it live and there are hundreds of foreign reporters here.

"It's a very dramatic scene. The women are all dressed in traditional black chadours, holding up photos of their dead relatives, bending over and kissing the coffins, crying, waving and ululating.

"There are also the four Hezbollah fighters being buried, who were killed in separate actions. One of them, who was called Hassan, appears to have been some kind of local commander. His photo is plastered all over town.

"I have spoken to many of the relatives and they seem not so much angry as defiant. Everyne spoke out very strongly in favour of Hezbollah as the only people capable of protecting them from Israeli attack and there were yellow Hezbollah flags all over the village. I spoke to the mother of a little girl who recounted the events of the day in question.

"There were 50 or so people in a makeshift bunker under a house when it was hit by a bomb. She managed to pull herself out of the rubble but it was the middle of the night and she couldn't find her girl anywhere, she assumed, as she told me, that she'd gone to heaven. The next time she saw her was in a photograph in a newspaper - the Lebanese Red Cross came and cleared the dead bodies and there was a picture of one of the Red Cross men carrying Zeinab, her 6-year-old daughter. She was very stoical when I spoke to her. She wiped away a few tears but said that she would join her daughter in heaven. She was calm, poised, defiant."

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