About 9.30 on the morning of 12 July 2006 I was driving from my house near Tyre to the town. As I left the house, I turned on the car radio to hear BBC World Service reporting that Hezbollah had kidnapped two Israeli soldiers on the border. Almost simultaneously, there was a loud explosion somewhere to the north; it turned out to be the Israeli’s bombing the bridge over the Litani River at Qasmieh on the coast road about 5 km north of the house. I decided to continue into town and do what I had to do; after this, I returned home, where we started monitoring the situation on various local and satellite news channels. Although there was Israeli bombing during the day, it was not in our immediate area. At about 8.30 p.m., following a bombing in the lemon orchards some 2 km below the house, the mains power was cut, never to be restored until 10 days after the cease-fire. It turned out that the cut was because of damage to cables caused by the nearby bombing.