LEBANON:The battered Mercedes careered through Tyre's ghostly streets, a white-lace flag fluttering from its aerial, and squealed to a halt before the hospital doors. Nine people spilled out.
A semi-conscious elderly man, his head wrapped in a dirty towel, collapsed on to a stretcher. Another blood-spattered man stumbled towards waiting medics. A pregnant woman pushed three children to safety.
Breathless and barefoot, driver Hassan Akil padded closely behind. An Israeli air strike crushed his neighbours' house, he said. Pinned down by the barrage of bombs, he desperately called the Red Cross for help. When no one had arrived an hour later, he made a dash for it. "One of them was dying. We had to drive," he blurted out, begging for a glass of water.
Even the shortest journey was potentially deadly around the southern city of Tyre yesterday, as Israeli warplanes and artillery pounded buildings, petrol stations and hillsides with renewed ferocity ahead of this morning's ceasefire.
Some of the strikes on Tyre targeted apparent military positions, blasting fruit orchards and banana groves from which Hizbullah rockets had taken flight. But others seemed aimed at destroying infrastructure and terrorising civilians.
Emergency services around Tyre have been largely grounded since an Israeli declaration that all vehicles travelling south of the Litani river are a legitimate target. A Lebanese Red Cross worker and six civilians were killed when a humanitarian convoy was attacked on Friday.
"This is not a war between soldiers. This is all about civilians," said weary- looking hospital director Dr Ahmed Mroue. Due to the perils of driving a vehicle, one injured woman had been transported to a clinic by donkey, he said. "The donkey is our new ambulance around here."
Young men that some Lebanese described as Hizbullah partisans loitered around the hospital door. They declined to be interviewed. However, as we interviewed a pregnant woman caught in the fighting, one of the men intervened and said to her: "Tell them everyone is a civilian where you come from."
In mid-afternoon, a motorbike roared up the hospital entrance, carrying a young bearded man holding aloft a crudely bandaged arm. As photographers crowded around, he pulled his black T-shirt over his face to hide his identity.
The hospital director said his staff would treat injured fighters but could not allow them to stay in case of Israeli attacks. During the 1982 invasion, Israeli commandos abducted three Hizbullah patients from the hospital - one from its operating theatre.
The injured also included at least four soldiers from the Lebanese army - the force supposed to take control of southern Lebanon from departing Israeli troops under the terms of the ceasefire coming into force at 5am GMT today.
Only a handful of the 25,000 people estimated to be still living in Tyre were to be seen on the empty streets yesterday. The town has been without electricity for several days since Israel destroyed a power station in Sidon, to the north.
Those who dared venture out offered cautious - often bitter - hopes for the success of the UN-sponsored peace plan.
Awada Diah (56) waited for a shave in the Talal barber shop.
"From our side, the ceasefire will be respected, but from theirs, we don't know. Their hearts are full of hatred. They cannot guarantee anything," he said.
Others warned that Israel's military action could reopen painful rifts between Lebanon's religious minorities.
"Israel is trying to make a new atmosphere to create opposition to the Islamic resistance," said driver Hassan, sucking from a tobacco water-pipe outside a shuttered shop, "but they will fail. The Lebanese people are united."