BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Once again, Lebanon's children are seeing what they shouldn't -- visions of death and destruction that may scar them for life. And those are the survivors.
A third of the Lebanese killed in Israeli attacks against Hezbollah guerrillas are children, the U.N. humanitarian chief said. Experts warn the conflict is taking a heavy psychological toll as well.
"You can't run away from the sound of bombs," said Nadine Maalouf, a child psychologist who has been working with traumatized children.
Lebanese are no strangers to violence, having suffered through the 1975-90 civil war and Israel's 1982 invasion. But parents who lived through those conflicts had hoped to shield their children.
Instead, they have found themselves helpless in the face of relentless Israeli airstrikes on guerrilla positions in Beirut and southern Lebanon that have flattened entire neighborhoods.
"There was a plane that made a pffff sound," 11-year-old Noor el-Hoda Sherri said, recalling her terror during the bombardment of her Haret Hreik neighborhood, which destroyed her apartment building.
"My heart was hurting. It was pounding very fast," she said, squeezing her chest. "I was thinking, 'This is it, we are going to die. This is our destiny.' I said, 'God will now punish me for all the things I did wrong'" -- then listed childhood transgressions such as lying to her mother or pushing around a younger girl.
Ali Kalash, 14, said that when an Israeli missile hit Hezbollah's al Manar TV studios in Haret Hreik on July 13, he and a dozen friends -- anticipating more attacks -- scribbled their names on a water tank near their homes "so that we can recognize our homes when the war is over."
His family's apartment building was destroyed in the strike, and they sought refuge in the same underground shelter as Noor el-Holda and her family.
"I was thinking we're all going to die and we'd never come back," Ali said.
U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland estimated that a third of the hundreds of people killed in Lebanon were children. UNICEF spokeswoman Susan Lagana said yesterday that Egeland's figure was based on numbers compiled by UNICEF.
"There is something fundamentally wrong with a war where there are more dead children then armed men," Egeland said yesterday at U.N. headquarters in New York. "It has to stop."
At least 443 people -- mostly civilians -- have been confirmed killed in Lebanon since fighting broke out after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a July 12 cross-border raid. On Thursday, Lebanon's health minister put the number at as many as 600 civilians.
At least fifty-two Israelis have been killed in the fighting, including 19 civilians who died in Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel. Three were children -- two boys, ages 4 and 8, from the town of Nazareth, and a 15-year-old girl from the village of Mughar. All were Israeli Arabs.
Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have been displaced, fleeing to shelters in schools, parks and underground parking lots.
It will be years before homes can be rebuilt and the children will likely have to move to unfamiliar neighborhoods -- deepening their trauma, Maalouf said.
That's when the children will miss "their point of reference" -- their friends, their favorite play spots, the store where they bought ice cream, she said.
Her clients have shown a variety of symptoms, ranging from depression and hypertension to withdrawal.
Many parents say their children have become aggressive or unruly. And they relive their horrifying experiences in dreams or in drawings.
The other night, Ali said he dreamed of an Israeli soldier standing at one door and a Hezbollah fighter at another. "I was thinking if the fighter breaks the door it would mean the resistance will win the war, if the Israeli does, then they will," he said. He woke up before he could find out.
Ali and Noor have been told their homes are gone and they watch endless television footage of their neighborhood's devastation. But while Ali has accepted the loss, Noor imagines returning to the park outside her apartment with her best friend, Mona Miqdad.
Noor started crying and hugged her mother as she talked about not knowing where Mona is. "When the war's over I'll go looking for her at her grandfather's," she said, chewing on her sleeve.
Ali is grateful that he and his family are alive, saying the apartment and the furniture are not important. He does wish he had his toy Humvee.
Most of the refugees came from predominantly Shi'a areas targeted by Israel in its campaign against the Shi'a Islamic militants, and the attacks have prompted many children -- notably boys -- to aspire to join the fight against Israel.
"I want to take revenge against the Israelis," said Ali, who in better times wanted to be an airline pilot.
Eleven-year-old Hussein Mqashar, who has always wanted to be a chef, now wants to join the "resistance," as Hezbollah is known among its supporters.
Thirteen-year-old Jamil Qbeis' dream was to be a surgeon. But now he wants to be a Hezbollah fighter.
"Because Israel is destroying us, killing us and displacing us," he said.
Haidar Faqih, 13, fled his home in the Beirut suburb of Hay el-Sellum and has taken refuge with his family in a school.
"When I grow older, I will join the resistance to fight and die a martyr," he said. That way, "I will go to heaven faster. If I die at home, I will be under the rubble, I'll die helpless."
Children of Lebanon's various sects -- Shi'as, Sunni Muslims, Christians and Druse -- who do not live in areas targeted by the Israelis still suffer from the fearful sound of bomb explosions, Maalouf said.
The children, she said, had been looking forward to summer vacation. "Instead, they saw shells raining on them, people burning. It's a shock and it's traumatizing."
Anthropologist Iman Hmeidan said he feared a deepening of sectarian divisions.
"The danger is that the child will grow up becoming too closely affiliated to his community and his sect rather than his country or homeland," said Hmeidan -- something that triggered the last civil war.