The Lebanese colours on the coffins at least preserved the neutrality of the dead.Only one placard was carried by a mourner, a hand-written slogan which carried the words “History repeating itself” alongside a Swastika and a Star of David. For, however much Qana people may show their distaste for the Hizbollah, it is Israel that they blame for the 18 April 18 massacre and at whom their fury was directed yesterday. He was shown the shell- splattered walls of the UN compound and he watched for several minutes as the coffins moved into the square Then he departed. Only one man tried to bring a Hizbollah flag to the funeral but the mourners, knowing that three Hizbollah men fired two Katyusha rockets 350 yards from the UN base just two minutes before the Israeli shells cut the refugees to pieces, drove him away.Most, though not all, of the people of Qana support Amal, Hizbollah’s Shia Muslim rival, and on the day before the funeral, both sides had fired shots in the air after disputing the other’s right to fly their party flags. “Do you see the girl in black?” He pointed to a young woman sitting on the edge of the grave, her feet hanging over the side, weeping and holding two framed photographs which she repeatedly kissed “That is Leila Jaber. They killed her father and her sister.” Another, older woman screamed in grief and tried to climb into the grave. A sea of upstretched hands sought to touch each coffin as it rode the swell above the crowds and when the Lebanese flags, red and white with a green cedar tree in the centre, fell off, young men would bind the flags around their waists or wrap them round their heads, less in patriotism than in the old tradition of giving life to some object associated with the dead.The Qana scouts’ band squeaked out a version of the Lebanese national anthem while, at the back of the crowd, from a side road, there emerged the tieless figure of the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, surrounded by bearded bodyguards.

In the Arab world, the dead are taken from their coffins and laid in the grave in mere shrouds. And yesterday, it was not the approaching funeral cortege that overwhelmed us with the sheer scale of the massacre but the empty thud of the used coffins as they were steadily piled to the right of the square, a hollow drumbeat that echoed dozens of times above the chanting of “God is Greater” and the angry roar of the mourners when a civil defence worker took a baby in a plastic bag out of its coffin. And all the while, the Fijian UN soldiers under whose protection these refugees died, stood on the roof of their wrecked compound and watched in silence.
“So many of these people were friends of ours,” one of them whispered to me. There were at least 91 of them – although plastic bags contained parts of several bodies – and they were all laid gently below the wall of the UN battalion headquarters in which they were slaughtered by Israeli shellfire 12 days earlier.

The coffins floated across the square on the uplifted palms of a thousand hands, eddying from side to side towards the mass grave of concrete and sand; and carried as they were on this human tide, the lids would slide off and the Lebanese flags would drift away onto the mourners and inside we would see the dead, wrapped in plastic sheets, sometimes so small that they could be taken from the coffin with one hand. “We have reasons to believe that this will not be a newspaper that tackles subjects that are uncomfortable for those in power,” said an announcement signed by 35 departing journalists Reuter. But the one-day strike by the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the country’s largest union group, failed to generate much support nationwide as shops, banks and mines operated as normal AP. Warsaw – Leading journalists at the city’s daily Zycie Warszawy announced they would quit, alleging that the new paper planned to curb criticism of the government dominated by ex-Communists. Johannesburg – Strikers held up traffic and roughed up a political leader in a bid to pressure last-minute negotiations on a new South African constitution. He was able to do so because Tasmania’s gun laws up to this week had been the least restrictive in Australia.Given the degree of public outrage over the killings, the Tasmanian state government yesterday announced that it would impose an immediate ban on the future sale of self- loading military weapons.

Meanwhile, Australia’s federal and state governments are to hold talks next week in a bid to introduce tough, uniform gun laws.Letters, page 16. Phil Wilkinson, an inspector with the Hobart criminal investigation bureau, said yesterday: “He had developed a growing interest in firearms quite recently. It’s my understanding that none of his family knew he had firearms.”Bryant is believed to have purchased his guns, including two semi-automatic military-style weapons used in the Port Arthur shootings, by mail order. “He would go from being a 25-year-old to a 12-year- old delinquent kid, just like that. Miss Harvey once told us that he’d threatened to shoot his own father.”The Featherstones reported their encounters and fears about Bryant to police, but their complaints were not followed up.On Monday, when police raided the deserted mansion in New Town where Bryant lives, they took away boxes of ammunition and a firearm. Neighbours alerted police who found his body floating in a farm dam with lead diving weights around his neck. Some people were suspicious about both deaths, but no charges have ever been laid.John and Sue Featherstone, farmers who live next door to the farm, which Bryant has since sold, have unhappy memories of their former neighbour.Mr Featherstone said yesterday that Bryant had once invited his wife and daughter in for tea.”Then he herded them outside and told them not to come back ever or he’d shoot them,” he said.