BEIRUT — Here’s the story I did for the San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle last night.

As Israeli jets screamed over­head and the resound­ing booms of bombs and shells echoed across the city Sat­ur­day, Ahmad Nanou, his wife and their 11 chil­dren clung together in an old school in a Beirut neigh­bor­hood as war raged around them.
Israeli jets and naval gun­ships unleashed a furi­ous pound­ing of the Lebanese cap­i­tal on Sat­ur­day after­noon, killing at least 33 peo­ple dur­ing the fourth day of the Mid­dle East’s lat­est war.
Nanou comes from the ancient south­ern Lebanese city of Tyre, where until Wednes­day he and his chil­dren sold lot­tery tick­ets in the street. That night, as Israel launched its attack on the Lebanese mil­i­tant group Hezbol­lah in retal­i­a­tion for the kid­nap­ping of two Israeli sol­diers, he and his fam­ily — four of the chil­dren still in dia­pers, he said — fled north by using back roads and cross­ing open fields. The Israelis had already bombed the bridges and main high­ways north to Beirut in their ini­tial assault.
Soon after the fam­ily fled the area, the Israeli air force bombed the back roads, too.
“The planes scared my chil­dren,” Nanou said as he waved his hands around the family’s new quar­ters in a Beirut school.
One of his chil­dren lay on a foam mat­tress with­out mov­ing, star­ing straight up. “My 3-year-old is in shock and can’t walk.”

I’ll be doing a lot of my posts like this, as much of my energy has to go into the free­lance work. I hope y’all don’t mind these short­cuts right now.