"Seven-year-old Zeinab Hamzi is proud of her scar. Raising her T-shirt she shows off the purple welt running vertically below her belly button. The wound was caused by a piece of shrapnel from an exploding mortar round.

"Zeinab had been picking vine leaves on July 2 for her mother near her home in the frontline village of Yohmor when the shell landed three meters away.

“I felt a pain in my stomach and yelled for my mum to bring me some Kleenex to wipe away the blood,” she said. “When my mum saw what had happened she started screaming.”

Zeinab is the latest victim of the violence engulfing Yohmor which has been on the increase since the village found itself almost cut off from the rest of the country following the “Israeli” Army’s annexation of neighboring Arnoun into the occupation zone last March.

On Thursday, the five-nation Monitoring Group blamed “Israel” for violating the April Understanding by damaging eight houses in Yohmor with rocket-propelled grenades and the ‘flechette’ tank rounds, which discharge hundreds of 2 centimeter-long steel darts.

“They’re using flechettes a lot more than before,” noted Shawki Nasr, a schoolteacher at Yohmor school, whose house was one of the eight that were damaged.

“Morale is very low in the village,” he said. “It’s very tense here. You could be sitting quietly then, without warning, there is shelling.”

Nasr said his wife, Sonia, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. “Her hands tremble for no reason,” he said. “When you talk to people, it’s as if they’re not paying attention. Nobody can concentrate. It’s very difficult.”

The harassment the villagers face comes from the “Israeli” troops in Beaufort castle. Only the top of a stone turret ­ now an “Israeli” machine-gun post ­ are visible from Nasr’s house at the edge of the village. The rest of the 12th century Crusader fortress is hidden by a hill. The soldiers manning the turret frequently fire the machine gun toward the village ­ usually indiscriminately, as testified by the bullet holes in the walls of Nasr’s house.

“Israeli” foot patrols venture out of the castle at night to monitor the surrounding area for infiltrating guerrillas and to keep an eye on movement in the village.

One night three months ago, Hassan Alleik, 18, and his brother, Hussein, 17, were leaving their aunt’s house in the center of the village to return home. As they stepped into a pool of light cast from a street lamp, both teenagers were shot and wounded.

“I was hit by the first shot they fired. They were firing very close by. It was not a mistake, they were aiming at us,” said Hassan. He was hit in both legs and his left arm. His brother was wounded in one leg.

Nasr said that most of the shelling and shooting around the village occurred at night.

“They can see us during the day. So if someone is wounded when they fire at night they can claim it was a mistake as they didn’t know we were there,” he noted.

Sonia Nasr said that she and her husband had trained their two children Mohammed, 8, and Ali, 7, to watch television as often as possible to prevent them from roaming too far from their home.

“It’s a shame. We would like them to have a healthy rural upbringing, but it’s too dangerous. We get worried every time they’re outside. At least if they hear fighting, they run home straight away,” she said.

"The impression of isolation is reinforced by the reluctance of most residents to leave Yohmor on the usual errands because of the possibility of roadblocks manned by SLA militiamen or random shooting along the single road out of the village".

"There is no running water in Yohmor. Each household has to purchase containers of water which are transported into Yohmor by tractor. Only 10 percent of the agricultural land around Yohmor is cultivated as residents are too afraid to venture far".

With the tobacco harvest underway, many residents leave their homes before dawn to begin work.

“A few days ago, some farmers were shot at as they arrived in their fields and they had to run home,” said Nasr.
The tobacco season is almost over. But the olive harvest begins shortly afterwards.

“Our olive trees are even further from the village than the tobacco,” said Nasr. “What do we do then?”