Hands and feet protruding from the earth told civil defence workers where to dig for at least 54 Lebanese civilians who died here in an Israeli bombing early yesterday.
The rescuers wore rubber gloves and dug with their hands. A piece of flowered cloth would emerge, then a torso. The corpses - almost all of them women and children - were lined up on the ground beside the collapsed building, then covered with grimy sheets and towels retrieved from the ruin where they had been sleeping when the Israeli air force struck.
One body led to another. Even in death, mothers hugged their children.
"I saw women in foetal positions, protecting their bodies, thinking the wall would protect them, but the opposite happened; the wall collapsed on them," said Naim Rakka, a civil defence worker.
The bodies of children were distressing: a little girl with an angelic face, her mouth overflowing with earth; small boys carried out by their spindly limbs, bruised purple from the weight of the concrete.
Close to one-third of this town, 10km (6 miles) from Tyre, has been flattened in nearly three weeks of Israeli bombardment, and the dead and wounded had to be carried hundreds of metres to ambulances on stretchers because roads were blocked by debris. There are other bodies lying in the wreckage of Qana. Its deserted streets reek of decomposing flesh. Israeli aircraft continued to bomb the area throughout the rescue operation and prime minister Ehud Olmert said that Israel was "in no hurry to reach a ceasefire".
This is the second time in 10 years that Qana, where Jesus Christ is said to have turned water into wine, has been the site of a massacre.
On April 18th 1996, the Israeli army bombarded the headquarters of the UN Fijian battalion, slaughtering 105 civilians who were sheltering there. Yesterday's atrocity, the worst since hostilities started on July 12th, occurred about a kilometre from the graves and monument of the 1996 victims, which has become a place of pilgrimage for Muslims around the world.
The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, cancelled a trip from Jerusalem to Beirut after the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, demanded an immediate, unconditional ceasefire.
"There is no room for discussion on this sad day," Mr Siniora said, calling the Israelis "war criminals".
Israel claimed that Hizbullah fired rockets from near the shelter and promised an investigation.
The victims of the bombing had sheltered in the basement for 10 days, sending two young men out for food.
One of the food searchers, Fares Attiya, said there were 63 people living in the shelter, including 34 children.
The Lebanese health ministry said that 700 Lebanese had been killed in nearly three weeks of war, and more than 2,000 wounded.
In Israel, 18 civilians and 33 soldiers have been killed.