Fighting Creates 700,000 Refugees

(CBS/AP)  His hands shook. He choked out his words. "Look at me," Mohammed Rahad said as he arrived at the Lebanese-Syrian border, a chaotic collection of makeshift buildings, tents and trailers among the arid hills and thorny brambles.

He held out his trembling hands and pointed to his two children. "They want to know why are we here," he said. "We have nothing." The family is among more than 200,000 Lebanese fleeing to Syria, according to the Syrian Red Crescent.

Scores of people on foot stood in line to get into Syria. Scores more waited in cars — a collection of mostly well-used vehicles overflowing with whatever the refugees could carry.

In areas where refugees have fled, the population is ten times what it was a week ago, reports CBS News correspondent Lee Cowan. Food and water are running out, and it's neither safe for aid workers to go in nor refugees to venture out.

"What's left of my country?" Rahad asked. Others waiting with him Saturday listened as he shouted in frustration.

"I will take a bomb and put it on me ... and explode it if I could find any Israeli. I would explode it and kill myself and them." He gestured as if stuffing a bomb inside his sweat-stained shirt. "I am not a terrorist, but today if I could, I would blow myself up. It is enough. I want to be a bomb. Israel comes with airplanes and tons of explosives. I want to say to (U.N. Secretary-General) Kofi Annan. Enough!"

Sue Mansour made the dangerous drive from Beirut with her three sons. The Lebanese-American grasped her U.S. passport and tried to push through the hot and angry crowd to the immigration desk. She had come to Lebanon to attend a wedding and arrived July 11, one day before the Israeli bombing began. She had been trying to leave ever since.

She had given up on the U.S. government-sponsored sea and helicopter evacuation out of Beirut, although she and the children were on the American list of people eligible for evacuation.

"We went every day, day after day after day to the place they told us to come but after hours and hours they said, 'Sorry come back tomorrow."' Finally, they gave up and headed for Syria.

The U.N. estimates there are 700,000 refugees from the fighting, and Annan has said he fears a humanitarian disaster.

Abdul Rahman Attar, head of the Syrian Red Crescent told The Associated Press in Damascus about 200,000 had crossed from Lebanon into Syria, and about 10 percent have received help from the Red Crescent. Attar said he has appealed to the International Committee of the Red Cross for more aid and was critical that so little had come to Syria from Europe and from fellow Arab nations.

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