ICRC makes first aid delivery to front line as MSF appeals for medicine

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delivered its first truckload of aid to villages along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel on Thursday. The delivery to Rmaich, Aiata ech Chaab and Naqoura Aalma ech Chaab is the first ICRC convoy to reach isolated villages caught in the front line of the ongoing battle between Hizbullah and the Israeli Defense Forces.

The aid agency had made previous aid deliveries to Marjaayoun, approximately 50 kilometres northeast of Tyre, and to Tebnine, in the hills east of Tyre. The absence of any security clearance from Israel had prevented ICRC from going any further south to villages receiving the brunt of Israeli fire.

In particular need of relief was Rmaich, a predominantly Christian village where thousands of displaced people have been sheltering for more than a week with dwindling food supplies and no running water. “People who had fled the village told ICRC delegates that the people were drinking foul water from a pool used to collect water for irrigation,” reads an ICRC statement.

Hisham Hassan, spokesman for the ICRC in Beirut, says the aid agency had gained assurances of safe passage to Rmaich from the Israeli military after being denied three times previously. He concedes that the supplies delivered are “only a little bit bigger than a drop in the sea” and warns that much more is needed. A further ICRC convoy of aid from Beirut to Tyre is planned for Saturday.

Meanwhile, Hakim Khalji, the field coordinator of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) for Tyre, says Israel would not guarantee his aid agency safe passage of humanitarian aid to south Lebanon until at least the end of the first week of August. “I have never faced such a problem with supply,” says Khalji. “We have no security here.”

Khalji says MSF has delivered five car-loads of medical supplies to Tyre over the past two days. This should last a week, he says, but he would rather bring a truckload.

Returning to Lebanon after a ten-year absence, the NGO opened a clinic in Bashour Hospital in central Tyre on 27 July. Khalji says the surgery has received 50 patients and is expecting hundreds more.

Khalji estimates that 15,000 to 20,000 people are currently displaced in Tyre, with most sheltering in schools, underground shelters or living with other families. “There are five hospitals in Tyre, which is enough to cover primary care needs, but the biggest need now is supplying drugs for chronic illnesses,” he says. “The city committee that used to administer that no longer functions and we have no way of supplying the villages with anything.”

Supplies have begun to trickle into the south now with the first UN aid convoy of ten trucks - loaded with 90 tonnes of flour, water purification kits and medical aid - arriving in Tyre on 26 July.

“We will finish the distribution of flour to bakeries today but we are now looking for diesel to operate the bakeries,” says Abed Husseini, head of Tyre municipality.

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