The Irish Times of October 18th, 1976, reported Palestinian sources as saying Israeli forces and Lebanese Christian allies were moving against the "Palestinian left-wing stronghold" of Hanin in southern Lebanon. The Israelis were providing the Christians with arms and ammunition to "keep the guerrillas out of the border region".

The Middle East was in conflict at the time and the fate of the villagers of Hanin merited only a few lines of agency copy.

Hanin, according to Mohammed Fayad, who stood yesterday amid the wreckage where it once stood, was "paradise". Set above a steep gorge, or wadi, it faced across to a grove of cedar trees and was set amid terraces of olive and fruit trees. Then in October 1976 it ceased to exist.

Israeli troops followed by militia from the surrounding Christian villages bulldozed the houses, Mr Fayad said, interpreting for older members of his family who were the parents of young families at the time. The Christians, who he said came from three neighbouring villages, killed people who refused to leave.

He pointed across the road that runs through the barely discernible remains of houses to one where he said a neighbour had had his throat cut by the Christian militia which went on to form the Israeli surrogate force here, the South Lebanon Army. As he spoke the neighbour's son, Mr Ali Sofar, who returned from Canada this week, arrived. He pointed to the same low pile of concrete which had been his family home and where his father Ahmet had been killed.

Around the village, groups of people sat in tents and minibuses surveying what had been their homes. Only one house stands in what had been a village of around 200 houses. Only the village elder, or mayor, Muktar Mohammed Abaas, who was too old and infirm to come outside his house, had lived alone among the remains of Hanin.

The families who returned here this week were deeply shocked at the complete dereliction that met them.

One of the village's two mosques had been used by the Christians to stable animals. There was a metre-deep mound of manure on the floor where the villagers had once worshipped.

The cedar trees across the wadi had been felled and the population of the Christian village had turned the wadi into a rubbish dump with years of waste and wrecked cars strewn down from the roadside to the floor of the valley.

Like so many other Muslim villages that had suffered like this during the Israeli occupation, Hanin's exiled population produced fighters for the extremist Islamic movement, Hizbullah.

Mohammed Fayad said Hanin had produced 10 "martyrs" for the Islamic Resistance, Hizbullah's military wing. It was the Resistance's harassment of the Israeli occupiers and the SLA that led to this week's Israeli withdrawal and the collapse and panicked evacuation of their Christian supporters.

Like almost every returning Muslim to the area, Mr Fayad said there would be no retaliation against the Christian communities. But he and the rest of his village want reparation from Israel and, he said, support from the United States and other countries who had backed Israel.

About 300 people had gathered at the site of the village and, Mr Fayad said, people would stay until it was rebuilt.

Just two kilometres south, the Christian population of the pretty village of Dibil is now in fear over its fate.

Last Sunday there were 1,750 people living in Dibil. Yesterday there were under 160. When Israel withdrew its forces on Monday and Tuesday morning, the Christian militia here lost its nerve and thousands, including the majority of Dibil's population, fled into Israel.

Dibil was the home of a notorious Christian militia leader, Akel Hashim, who became rich from trading inside the Israeli zone after it was cleared of Muslin business people.

On January 31st, a bomb exploded beside his car as he drove out of his home in the village, killing him instantly. The loss of such an important figure was a severe blow to the morale of the SLA.

Yesterday, a few dozen villagers gathered in the cool white hall beside the stone church of St George awaiting a senior Lebanese government official who arrived just before lunch to reassure them of their position and rights as citizens in the newly expanded jurisdiction of Lebanon.

The director general of the Ministry of Hydraulics and Electricity reassured the meeting he would see that they had sufficient diesel to run their communal generator.

"I am here to reassure the people because they need water and electricity. There is a plan for the rehabilitation of this region. The plan will be rapid in order to supply the water and electricity."

As he left, the village priest and spokesman for the villagers, Father Joseph Naddaf, said through an interpreter he expected the remaining population would be safe.

There was "no way at all" that the village would be attacked. There had been assurances from senior Hizbullah people to this effect. He also said there had been no violence against his parishioners.

Other villagers seemed less sure. Local businessmen Toni Al-Bassar and Maroun Said pointed out that the villagers had been unable to get diesel for their generators and they needed 10,000 litres immediately to keep the generator going.

As they spoke, cars with Hizbullah flags drove silently through the town. Another villager who did not wish to be named said 30 or 40 cars and household goods had been stolen during the past two days by people from outside. There had been no violence, he said.

Father Naddaf and the men in the hall who had chosen to stay in the village were distinctly nervous yesterday.

Just north of the town, checkpoints had been set up by Islamic Resistance fighters in black combat uniforms for a mass rally by the leader of Hizbullah, Sheikh Nazrallah.

Hizbullah has stated it will treat the Christians villagers here well and regard them as Lebanese citizens.

UN peacekeepers say they expect the Islamic fighters will protect the Christians, as they do not wish to have their reputation tarnished by claims of ethnic violence.

UN sources say it will be vital for the future security of the entire population here that the formerly cleansed Muslim population receive rapid assistance in the rebuilding of their homes and farms.