"this is the day to bury our dead."

The breeze blew fine dust across graves where 29 people killed in an Israeli airstrike — half of them children — were buried, as the ground was opened for funerals in south Lebanon on Friday, the Muslim holy day.

Women in black robes, their heads hidden by black scarves, held pictures of the dead and threw rice and rose petals on the plywood caskets in the village of Qana, struck during the 34-day Israel-Hezbollah war. Twenty-six coffins were draped in the Lebanese flag and three in the yellow Hezbollah flag.

To the east, the Lebanese army symbolically took control of a first border village from withdrawing Israeli forces, as two soldiers drove slowly through Kfar Kila in a jeep. And in a bid to prevent more arms from reaching Hezbollah fighters, the government vowed to take over all border crossings nationwide, including 60 known smuggling routes from Syria.

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posted by Lazarus, 2:03 PM