Millstones, Salam. Millstones:
TYRE, Lebanon – A civil defense worker who has drawn controversy for holding up the bodies of children killed in Lebanon said Tuesday he was lightly injured fighting a weekend fire sparked by an Israeli bomb.
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Salam Daher, dubbed the Green Helmet for the color of his civil defense headgear, said he was hit by debris Sunday when a bomb or missile fell on a building while he was helping to battle a fire at a gas station in the port city of Tyre.
“I fell over when the bomb hit, and I got some scratches from debris that flew up on my face,” he said.
The 20-year veteran civil defense worker said he shows dead children to photographers to make clear that Israeli airstrikes killed young Lebanese during the monthlong conflict. Some Internet bloggers have accused him of setting up photos and of treating the dead insensitively.
In one photograph, taken after an Israeli airstrike hit a building in the village of Qana, Daher held a dead infant over his head. The boy’s blue pacifier was pinned to his nightshirt.
“I did hold the baby up, but I was saying ‘look at who the Israelis are killing. They are children,'” Daher said. “These are not fighters. They have no guns. They are children, civilians they are killing.’ “
