She has the look of someone completely lost, yet Hawra Hashem refuses to let go of the hope that her mother may still be alive under the debris. "Mother promised we would go for a picnic after the war, and when the bombs were falling she talked to us about the treats we would eat," Hawra says between bouts of sobbing.
The picnic will never take place. The 12-year-old lost most of her family to an Israeli air strike, and now she does not know which way to turn.
Her mother and three brothers were all killed on July 30 in the south Lebanon village of Qana while sheltering from Israeli bombs that ended the lives of 28 civilians -- 16 of them children -- in a blinding instant.
Since Israel launched its offensive on Hezbollah after the Shiite militia seized two soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12, the conflict has killed nearly 1,000 Lebanese people and wounded 3,000 more.
Now Hawra sits in a corner at an emergency accommodation centre in Sidon, the largest city in the south of the country.
"I need my mother and I miss my brother," she says in a hushed voice. "What will become of me?"
Then suddenly she cries out.
"Maybe mother is still alive under the ruins! Go and pull her out, I beg you. I'm sure she is still alive."
Later Hawra talks about her brothers, 12-year-old Hussein and Ali, who was just two and very attached to his teddy bear. Then there was seven-year-old Ibrahim, who never strayed far from their mother Maryam's skirts.
Maryam constantly prayed to God that no harm would befall her family and four children, Hawra says.
"I call out to mother, but she doesn't come," Hawra says. "I hear my brother's clumsy footsteps behind me, but when I turn round he isn't there.
"Anyway, he won't bump into things and hurt himself any more," she adds, tears coursing down her cheeks.
"Today they are in paradise. I wish I'd gone with them, rather than stay here alone."
The only other member of Hawra's immediate family to survive the air strike was her father, who was wounded and is still in hospital in Tyre.
Now she is staying in an apartment in the city with other refugees, including 14-year-old Sana Shalhoub who lives over and over again the final hours she spent with her family in Qana.
"I was talking about school with my friends as we listened in fear to the thunder of the Israeli planes," she recalls.
When she became tired, Sana fell asleep by her mother's side. When she woke up again, the building had already been flattened. "I awoke to cries of 'Anyone still alive get out!'," she says. "I didn't hear any bang. But I did feel blood running from my head. We were in total darkness."
She had to step over bodies on her way out.
"I called for father and mother, but there was no reply. I found my sister Zeinab, and she told me to leave while they searched for our parents under the rubble."
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