A Lebanese family is fleeing the Israeli hell in south Lebanon. (Reuters)

BINT JBEIL, Lebanon — A stench of death is rising from the ruins of the town of Bint Jbeil, south Lebanon's capital of liberation, with stranded residents waiting for a chance to escape the Israeli hell.

"We have been living in hell and fear for 21 days, without power or water and we felt real hunger," Zeinab Baalbaki told Reuters.

Baalbaki, who lost many relatives in the deadly Israeli raids, said they were forced to eat stale and mouldy bread to survive.

"The children felt the worst pain because we could not find milk," she recalled bitterly.

"Is it their fault, these people who had their homes brought down on their heads," asked the crying woman.

In Aynata, a youth guided journalists to places where bodies remained buried under the rubble, with no one able to remove them with continued Israeli shelling.

Locals left signs to mark where the dead bodies lay.

"Four bodies inside this house", reads a notice scrawled with charcoal on the remains of a house in the southern village.

Up to 800 Lebanese, mostly children and civilians, have been killed since Israel launched its three-week onslaught on the pretext of seeking the release of two soldiers taken prisoner by Hizbullah.

Many civilians were still trapped under the ruins of houses that were brought down by the Israeli military juggernaut.

Begging to Flee

Stranded residents in the south have been waiting for a chance to escape the brutal Israeli attacks on their villages.

In Aitaroun, buildings were reduced to rubble and roads and streets were completely flattened, trapping people sheltering inside.

Tearful villagers, mostly women, children and elders, clutch white sheets and what belongings they can salvage, begging journalists and rescue workers for a ride out of the area.

Some of them sat in cars or open trucks waiting to leave. Others had no cars and hitched rides with visiting journalists.

Many Lebanese families were killed in Israeli shelling while fleeing the Israeli inferno in the south.

After 21 days of Israeli air strikes, rescue workers have used a partial 48-hour respite to aerial bombardment to visit Lebanese border villages that have taken the brunt of the Israel war and been largely cut off from the world.

Viva Resistance

Despite their suffering, residents pledged support to the resistance group Hizbullah and its chief Hassan Nasrallah.

"We are with Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah even if we have to die," repeated Fatima al-Sayyed as she sat weeping in her black veil with a toddler in her lap.

Many of the survivors vent their anger at not only the Israeli enemy but also some Arab leaders who failed to rise to the challenge.

"My God destroy Israel and destroy the Arab rulers before it because they are all conspiring against us," said Fatima al-Akhras, an elderly woman.

Analysts expected that many Arab leaders would pay for failure to stand by the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance and defeating silence regarding the Israeli killing of civilians and destruction of infrastructure.

Heart-breaking images of Lebanese children and civilians brought from under the rubble of a house demolished in an Israeli air strike on the southern village of Qana only drew "strongly worded" statements of condemnation from Arab leaders.

Some of them have even spared themselves the agony of offering condolences to the Lebanese.

An initiative by Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to convene an emergency summit to discuss the war on Lebanon failed to get the needed quorum over the lack of interest shown by several Arab leaders.

"In the end God will make us victorious, make the resistance victorious," said a confident al-Akhras.