ISRAEL: It was not the first air raid siren of the day and residents of the old Arab quarter of the Israeli city of Haifa knew well enough that it heralded another barrage of Hizbullah rockets launched from southern Lebanon.
Labeeba Mizawi (68) lived alone and, as always when the siren went off, she hurried across the street into the front yard of her neighbour and relative, Hanna Hamam. She sat on a plastic garden chair talking to Mr Hamam (62), who stood in the doorway of his home. The rest of his family had run inside for cover.
Then the rocket struck, half destroying the house next door. Thousands of small ballbearings rained into the front yard in a shower of burning hot steel. Ms Mizawi and Mr Hamam, both Arab Christians, were killed instantly.
"She said she didn't want to sit at home with the siren going off," said Bashir Mshaeel (28), a neighbour who had been standing on the street in Wadi Nisnas. "So she came in here," he said, and pointed to the hundreds of holes dug by the ballbearings into the wall, fence and floor of the yard where they died.
"It was terrifying. As soon as the rocket hit, the electricity went out. There was complete darkness."
On the garden wall hung a painting of the Last Supper above a box of children's toys and a pile of plastic chairs.
Another rocket landed in northern Haifa on Sunday night, killing an Israeli Jew.
The three were the latest civilian victims of Hizbullah's crudely aimed rockets.
So far 94 Israelis have died, mostly soldiers. A significant number of the civilians killed have been Arab Israelis, largely because many live in the north - Haifa is one of the more mixed Jewish-Arab cities in Israel - but also, residents complain, because there are fewer public bomb shelters in Arab districts and because they rarely fit houses with strong rooms. Even though more than 250,000 Israelis have fled the north, the number of civilian deaths has risen steeply in the past week, partly a result of an increased number of rockets falling in the area.
Two more air raid sirens sounded last night in Haifa, and there were sounds of explosions as rockets struck, but within minutes cars and pedestrians were back on the street.
It was Samir Rashed's house which took the full force of the rocket in Wadi Nisnas on Sunday night.
When the siren sounded, his wife, Rana, ran with their five-month-old son, Elias, into the kitchen. Her husband was in the hall closing the front door. "Immediately there was black smoke everywhere and the house was falling down around us," said Rana.
"I was calling out for my husband: 'Samir, Samir' and he was calling for me but I couldn't see him. He shouted: 'I'm lying on the floor. I'm hurt, I can't move.'" Neighbours ran in to help. Mr Mshaeel, who had been hit by shrapnel in the thigh, was the first.
"I didn't think, I just ran in. I heard Samir say: 'Get my wife and child.' So I found them and brought them out."
Medics from the ambulance service arrived and eventually pulled Mr Rashed out of the rubble of his home.
"He was covered in blood," said his wife, Rana. "He had been hit by these metal balls all over his body, his leg was broken. It was a miracle he was alive."
Yesterday, Mr Rashed (40) was lying in a hospital bed surrounded by crowds of relatives. Two weeks ago he took the family away for a break from the rockets, "just to clear our minds", he said.
"But how many times can you leave? You have to come back eventually and then this happened," he said.
"I don't want this war, none of us wants it. You can't solve anything by conflict, you need negotiations." - (Guardian service)