This is just surreal:
The caption reads:
Lebanese civil defense rescuers, try to remove two blanket-wrapped bodies, found trapped under debris and concrete of the destroyed buildings, attacked late Monday by Israeli airstrike, in the southern Beirut suburb of Chiah, Lebanon, Tuesday Aug. 8, 2006. The raid on the Muslim southern suburb next to a Christian neighborhood killed at least 15 people, police officials said. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
The bodies were found already wrapped in blankets under the debris of the building.
I'm trying to think of rational reasons that Lebanese would keep pre-packaged corpses in their homes, and I'm coming up with nothing. Nada. Zip.
One irrational explanation is that some bodies are being saved by Hezbollah to use in photo ops at a later date, and that the Hezbollah Body Shop (for lack of a better term) got hit, and buried those that should already have been buried.
But that's just nuts. Hezbollah would never use corpses to stage a media event.
Ever.
Update: Same photographer, different angle, similarly-worded caption:
Lebanese civil defense rescuer directs a buldozer as he stands next to a two blanket-wrapped bodies, center, found trapped under the destroyed buildings, which were attacked late Monday in an Israeli airstrike, in the southern Beirut suburb of Chiah, Lebanon, Tuesday Aug. 8, 2006. The raid on the Muslim southern suburb next to a Christian neighborhood killed at least 15 people, police officials said. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
And another.
So either he really does mean to imply the bodies were blanket-wrapped when found, or his preciseness with the English language is right up there with Adnan Hajj's PhotoShop skills.
Further Update It seems Malla was also one of the photographers that took one of the pictures of Twice-Bombed Lady, and was hanging out with with fired Reuters stringer Adnan Hajj, he of the questionable llama picture, among others.
Update: Dig this.
From Brian Denton, a photographer in Lebanon, at photography forum LightStalkers:
i have been working in lebanon since all this started, and seeing the behavior of many of the lebanese wire service photographers has been a bit unsettling. while hajj has garnered a lot of attention for his doctoring of images digitally, whether guilty or not, i have been witness to the daily practice of directed shots, one case where a group of wire photogs were choreographing the unearthing of bodies, directing emergency workers here and there, asking them to position bodies just so, even remove bodies that have already been put in graves so that they can photograph them in peoples arms. these photographers have come away with powerful shots, that required no manipulation digitally, but instead, manipulation on a human level, and this itself is a bigger ethical problem.
