2006年VOA标准英语-Lebanese Bury Victims of Qana Airstrike

By Challiss McDonough
Qana, Lebanon
19 August 2006

Funeral procession in Qana

In south Lebanon, mourners have buried the victims of the Qana airstrike. Most of the people killed in the July 30 attack were women and children. Their deaths sparked international outrage¹ and increased international pressure for an end to the Israeli military campaign against Hezbollah. VOA's Challiss McDonough attended the funeral in Qana and has this report.

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The victims of Qana were laid to rest amid a mix of grief and anger. There were 29 graves, dug in neat rows just 100 meters from the crumpled² house where the bodies were dug from the rubble³ 18 days earlier.

Clutching a photo of her dead sister Khadija, Fayrouz Younes could barely speak through her tears. She choked back sobs⁴ as she recalled how she learned of the death of her sister, and Khadija's five children.

She says she saw the catastrophe⁵ on television, but nobody told her that her sister had been killed. She only found out hours later, when someone offered her condolences, not realizing that she did not know of Khadija's death.

Her tears dripped onto the photo of her sister, and then she recited the names of Khadija's dead children: Hura, Yehia, Ali, Zahra and Qassim Chalhoub.

Everyone killed in the Qana airstrike came from one of two families, the Chalhoubs and the Hashems. Roughly half of the dead were children.

The funeral in Qana was one of many on Friday. There were more than 200 funerals in other villages throughout south Lebanon. In Tyre, workers exhumed⁶ bodies that had been buried in temporary mass graves during the war.

Ambulances carrying the coffins⁷ were followed by long lines of cars full of relatives, heading back to their villages to bury the dead, five days after the conflict ended.

Here in Qana, mourners carried the coffins through the streets of town to the burial place.

Pounding on their chests, they pledged their loyalty⁸ to Hezbollah, and denounced America and Israel.

Twenty-six of the coffins were covered with Lebanese flags and three of them with yellow Hezbollah flags. Those were the coffins of Hezbollah fighters from Qana, but the militia⁹ said they had been killed elsewhere -- in Bint Jbail and Ait Esh Shaab.

The Shi'ite cleric leading the prayers said the United States and Israel were "partners" in the killing¹⁰ of Lebanese people.

A mourner who gave her name only as Kamla reminded visitors that the United States speeded up a delivery of bombs to Israel during the conflict.

"Tell Bush that those 'smart bombs' are not smart .... They killed not one resistance fighter here, only women and children," she said.

Israel has apologized for the Qana airstrike, calling it "a mistake." But for residents of the town, it is hard to believe that the powerful and technologically¹¹ advanced Israeli military could make such a grave error truly by accident.

All day, unmanned Israeli reconnaissance planes circled overhead, a constant reminder¹² that the Israeli military is still monitoring activity in southern Lebanon even after the ceasefire. Mohamed Chalhoub lost his daughter, sister and brother in the airstrike and was wounded himself.

He gestured at the sky and said, "Those planes were up there 24 hours a day before the attack. I am sure they saw everything." He said they must have seen women and children coming in and out of the building.

At the end of the day, the television cameras were gone, and relatives of the victims stood silently, some of them quietly weeping as they watched men shovel¹³ earth over the 29 graves.

1 outrage   

n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒

参考例句：

• When he heard the news he reacted with a sense of outrage.他得悉此事时义愤填膺。
• We should never forget the outrage committed by the Japanese invaders.我们永远都不应该忘记日本侵略者犯下的暴行。

2 crumpled   

adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式

参考例句：

• She crumpled the letter up into a ball and threw it on the fire. 她把那封信揉成一团扔进了火里。
• She flattened out the crumpled letter on the desk. 她在写字台上把皱巴巴的信展平。

3 rubble   

n.（一堆）碎石，瓦砾

参考例句：

• After the earthquake,it took months to clean up the rubble.地震后，花了数月才清理完瓦砾。
• After the war many cities were full of rubble.战后许多城市到处可见颓垣残壁。

4 sobs   

啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• She was struggling to suppress her sobs. 她拼命不让自己哭出来。
• She burst into a convulsive sobs. 她突然抽泣起来。

5 catastrophe   

n.大灾难，大祸

参考例句：

• I owe it to you that I survived the catastrophe.亏得你我才大难不死。
• This is a catastrophe beyond human control.这是一场人类无法控制的灾难。

6 exhumed   

v.挖出，发掘出( exhume的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Marie Curie's remains were exhumed and interred in the Pantheon. 玛丽·居里的遗体被移出葬在先贤祠中。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• His remains have been exhumed from a cemetery in Queens, New York City. 他的遗体被从纽约市皇后区的墓地里挖了出来。 来自辞典例句

7 coffins   

n.棺材( coffin的名词复数 )；使某人早亡[死，完蛋，垮台等]之物

参考例句：

• The shop was close and hot, and the atmosphere seemed tainted with the smell of coffins. 店堂里相当闷热，空气仿佛被棺木的味儿污染了。 来自辞典例句
• Donate some coffins to the temple, equal to the number of deaths. 到寺庙里，捐赠棺材盒给这些死者吧。 来自电影对白

8 loyalty   

n.忠诚，忠心

参考例句：

• She told him the truth from a sense of loyalty.她告诉他真相是出于忠诚。
• His loyalty to his friends was never in doubt.他对朋友的一片忠心从来没受到怀疑。

9 militia   

n.民兵，民兵组织

参考例句：

• First came the PLA men,then the people's militia.人民解放军走在前面，其次是民兵。
• There's a building guarded by the local militia at the corner of the street.街道拐角处有一幢由当地民兵团守卫的大楼。

10 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

11 technologically   

ad.技术上地

参考例句：

• Shanghai is a technologically advanced city. 上海是中国的一个技术先进的城市。
• Many senior managers are technologically illiterate. 许多高级经理都对技术知之甚少。

12 reminder   

n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示

参考例句：

• I have had another reminder from the library.我又收到图书馆的催还单。
• It always took a final reminder to get her to pay her share of the rent.总是得发给她一份最后催缴通知，她才付应该交的房租。

13 shovel   

n.铁锨，铲子，一铲之量；v.铲，铲出

参考例句：

• He was working with a pick and shovel.他在用镐和铲干活。
• He seized a shovel and set to.他拿起一把铲就干上了。