“I’m sorry I can’t offer you anything,” he apologized. "His house on the eastern edge of Majdal Selem was struck by one of two 250-kilogram bombs dropped by an "Israeli" F-16 fighter-bomber Thursday. One bomb reportedly exploded 500 meters away, but the second projectile flattened the two-story structure".

"Two members of the Believers of the Resistance, an off-shoot of the Amal movement, were killed in the explosions. A third man was wounded.

"Yassin surveyed his home, now a pile of crushed concrete with crazily twisted steel-reinforcing rods pointing skyward. “My family and I were lucky not to have been killed,” he said.

"Yassin said that most of his family had been working in a tobacco field at his grandfather’s house a few hundred meters away at the time of the raid.

"He himself left the house a few seconds before the bombs struck. He was planning to renew his passport and had taken photocopies of identification documents to show the authorities. “The originals were all destroyed in the house. Now I can’t officially prove who I am,” he said, shrugging his shoulders."

"His house was one of a cluster of buildings at the end of a track leading to Wadi Slouqi, on the edge of the occupation zone. The wall of at least one other house was peppered by shrapnel. "Shortly before the raid, "Israeli" artillery began shelling just north of Majdal Selem, security sources said. "The residents scoffed at the suggestion that Mohammed Traboulsi and Abbas Zein, the two men killed in the raid, were active guerrilla fighters".

“They were working in a field below the house,” said Yassin. “When they heard some shelling and the warplanes they ran up to the house to get some cover.”

"The government is expected to file a complaint with the five-nation Monitoring Group ­ not over the deaths of the two men, but over the raid having taken place in a populated area".

"But for Yassin, the rights and wrongs of the conflict were overshadowed by more immediate concerns: “All I’m thinking of now is to find shelter for my family. Then I’ll begin thinking about rebuilding,” he said.

"He plans to stay with his parents, who are renting a nearby house after their own was destroyed by the "Israelis" in the April 1996 onslaught".