Tyre residents go hungry as shelves go bare

"For a week now I have been the only one who dared to open and people fell over each other to get into my shop. Now I have nothing left -- no rice, no sugar, nothing," lamented the 69-year-old shopkeeper.

"Yesterday I sent my son out with a driver I paid 500 dollars to go fetch bread and other supplies from Sidon," the main southern city 42km north up the coast.

"I pray to God that he returns safe and sound," he said.

Cut off from the rest of the country by the Israeli offensive, those inhabitants of Tyre who have not fled north are now facing shortages of food and essential items.

The Israeli army has dropped leaflets warning that it would strike any vehicle travelling south of the Litani river, an area that includes this city, and aid agencies have warned it is almost impossible to deliver relief.

Tyre's central market, which would have been thronging with morning shoppers before the war, is now almost deserted, except for the cats and dogs wandering among the empty fruit and vegetable stalls.

In one corner, all that 56-year-old Ali Mussa Farran has left to sell are some rather ripe tomatoes and cabbages.

"Normally fruit and vegetables come from the villages around Tyre but now they have been abandoned. We haven't received anything since the start of the war," he said.

Farran admits that his produce is already two weeks old but he says that will not stop people eating it.

"Lots of people come without any money and we give them what we have for free. People are starting to go hungry. I don't know what the people of Tyre are going to eat," Farran said.

Elsewhere in the city, one man has managed to get three sacks of flour, which he is using to bake bread on a small wood fire. A long queue has formed.