Bassem Mroue

The first thing I did when I woke up today was watch television to see what was going on. Tuning between LBC, Manar, NBN, Future, New TV, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya there were no major reports other than air raids here and there during the night. But about half an hour after breaking news began with reports from the southern town of Qana. A building bombed by Israelis and many people are buried under the rubble, the stations said. More than 50 people, many of them women and children, were killed. The strike occurred at around 1 a.m. which could mean that they were sleeping when the war planes hit. The bombing brought condemnation from throughout the world and left Lebanese in shock as they saw bodies of children being extracted from under the rubble by members of the Lebanese Red Cross. It brought back the memories of the April 18, 1996 when Israeli bombing killed more than 100 people in a U.N. base in the same town. The night before I drove around the city but Beirut was not the one I ...

Heading to Baghdad International Airport on Thursday morning, I thought it was a quiet day in the city. The airport road, once known "death road," was not very crowded and the trip was fine. Later I knew it was not. As I was at the airport, four explosions occurred in the central neighborhood of Karradah killing at least 32 people and wounding many others. This is Baghdad where hardly a day passes without dozens of people losing their lives, in markets, coffee shops, mosques or even in their homes. Giving my passport to the immigration officers, he immediately looked at me and asked: "How is Lebanon?" Iraqi Airways flight to Damascus took about 90 minutes and it would have been great had a young boy sitting in front of me not vomited near me. Poor boy, he got sick for it was the first time he rides an airplane. From Damascus' International Airport to the city's downtown, pictures of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah were everywhere. In cars, on billboards, s...