THE interior of a Sisu armoured personnel carrier is a very uncomfortable place, with low steel ceilings and narrow bench seats with thin cushions.
The vehicle is entirely functional, squat and ugly, and designed to transport infantry safely to the battlefield where they jump from its steel plated protection to shoot other soldiers.
The Sisus operated by the Irish Battalion in south Lebanon have been transformed from vehicles of war into steel white angels of mercy. They are ambulances in a place where ordinary Lebanese ambulances have been targeted by Israeli helicopter gunships.
The Sisus are the only moans of rescue for people trapped in villages targeted by Israeli bombardment and shelling.
Over the past two weeks the Irish Sisus have collected hundreds of people from the bombed villages and brought them to the relative safety of the hospital in Tibnin or to other shelters.
But thousands of people remain in the villages unapproachable by any civilian vehicle. Their situation is coming close to desperate. The Sisus are the only way to deliver food to hungry women and children trapped in the villages around here. Hundreds of people with no means of escape are hiding in the basements of houses and there are desperate food shortages.
Up north, the Lebanese relief agencies are collecting and assembling food for these victims of the Israeli bombardment. Yesterday, three Irish Battalion Sisus carried hundreds of food parcels to "trapped people" in several villages in the centre of the conflict.
The food was crammed into the vehicles and delivered to the villages in the mid afternoon heat. At the first drip off point, the remaining inhabitants of Shaqra were too frightened to come collect the food and it was for them on a roadway.
Circling in the sky above were two Israeli Cobra assault helicopters. As the Sisus entered the village, the sound of an exploding missile from one of the helicopters could be clearly heard inside the Sisu. As the food was being unloaded the helicopters turned in the direction of the convoy but then veered and fired another missile. It was a tense moment.
The last of the food was left at a checkpoint on the edge of the Irish Battalion area for distribution to three villages in the Ghanaian Battalion area.
All the time, the drone of pilotless surveillance aircraft could be heard overhead. It is these poisonous little planes, sounding like diesel lawnmowers, that relay coordinates back to the Israeli artillery and war planes that are imprisoning the people of south Lebanon.
Wherever the "drones" are in the air, the people know they can be seen and killed.
Yesterday, after the Sisus had delivered the food and returned to the Irish headquarters at Camp Shamrock, in Tibrin, the Irish Battalion received a request to collect a dead body from near the village of Shaqra. However, during the evening there was a threat of artillery fire and the operation was put off until today. It is thought the body is that of the man whose car was hit by Israeli helicopter fire on Tuesday night.