'Isolated and scared' Lebanon in shock on a day of air strikes and funerals

The funeral was over almost as soon as it began. Women did not linger in their lamentations but marched directly alongside the pallbearers to bury the body.

- William Christou

An overzealous Hezbollah staff member did not wait for them to finish before pulling the picture of their fallen comrade off the martyr's shrine, eager to pack up. Ten minutes later, the crowd dispersed, filtering out past army checkpoints set up for the occasion in the southern Beirut neighbourhood.

The funeral - a far cry from the usual 90-minute-long ceremonies to honour the Shia militia's deceased - was one of dozens held across Lebanon yesterday. One after the other, Hezbollah had issued a steady stream of funerary announcements as the death toll mounted from the operation, which has been attributed to Israel, that blew up pagers and walkie-talkies on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In total, at least 37 people were killed and more than 3,000 wounded by the blasts, according to Lebanon's ministry of health.

Those who came out to honour the dead did so warily, the explosions that interrupted another Beirut funeral just the day before still fresh in their minds.

"My friend's father lost his eyes in the blasts. We've never seen an attack like this, everyone was shocked," Saeed, a 25-year-old driving instructor said, himself having been just metres away from the earlier blasts.

An hour after the burial, the secretary-general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, spoke, his first appearance since the pager attacks.

Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes carried out a series of airstrikes in Lebanon's south, targeting what the Israeli military said were "Hezbollah targets".