Deadly scramble for shelter in Lebanon

Hayat Jomaa, her lips crusted white, is one of hundreds who have walked this stretch of road, coming from Lebanon's border towns and heading for the government hospital in the village of Tebnin.

The hospital she was bound for is brimming with some 1,500 refugees with apocalyptic stories, who came in search of food, water, medicine and, most importantly, refuge.

Travelling the roads into and out of these southern villages is a crapshoot with Israeli missiles regularly slamming into fleeing vehicles. The hospital is struggling for supplies to feed dozens of hungry displaced people.

"A piece of bread and a slice of cheese count as a meal," said the hospital's stand-in director Mohammad Zeineddin, a Lebanese army officer.

Doctors struggled with nine heart attacks and four women have given birth in the hospital, which was closed for remodelling when the humanitarian crisis erupted after Israel launched a massive offensive

The old equipment was long ago carted off and the new has yet to arrive. The hospital has no x-ray machine, anaesthesia, or oxygen to treat those wounded in the bombardment.

Some 400 children have diarrhoea and are vomiting.

"We don't know why," says Jihad Mehanna, one of just two exhausted doctors who remain at the hospital. "Maybe the water is no good."

Still, displaced people continue to stream in by the dozens, making the desperate trek along deserted sun-baked roads, through abandoned and tattered villages, carrying infants and waving white flags as a plea to the warplanes above.

They claw at the windows of passing vehicles begging for a sip of water or a lift. It's an eight-kilometre journey from Bint Jbail to the hospital. From Aitaroun and Maroun al-Ras, other villages at the frontlines of the Israeli onslaught, it's a bit longer.