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[BEIRUT, July 26Â 2006] - Ali Ahmed should be spending the summer holidays playing with his friends, but instead he is recovering in a Beirut hospital from wounds caused by an Israeli attack on his village. The shelter where he and his family sought refuge from the bombardment did not protect them completely. "I put my arms around my head and covered my eyes. I could feel sand and dirt falling around me," said the 10-year-old, attached to a drip as hospital staffed pushed his wheelchair. One of his two baby sisters laughed and played in her cot nearby, a bandage covering the wound where the blast had sliced off her thumb. A hospital worker read a story to another of his sisters, her head wrapped in bandages. Two weeks of war between Israel and Hizbollah has hit Lebanon's children hard. Children account for more than a third of the hundreds of people killed and half of the 700,000 displaced by the conflict, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Children's Fund UNICEF said. The war has killed 418 people in Lebanon and 42 in Israel, which is trying to stop Hizbollah from firing rockets into Israeli towns and cities. Ali cannot remember when his village of Blida, on the border with Israel, was hit. "The wounds were the only thing I could think about. The shell landed between my father and sister. They had the worst injuries," he said. UNFAZED BY BLASTS Ordnance narrowly missed the house of Jaafar Harb, 10, in the southern village of Bint Jbeil, which is now in the front line of fighting between Hizbollah and Israeli forces. "A shell flew over our house, but didn't fall on it," he said, imitating the noise he heard as it flew past his home. "They kept hitting us," he said. Jaafar escaped from Bint Jbeil to Beirut, where he, his family and hundreds of other displaced people were living in a college building. In the yard, volunteers were organising story telling, drawing and games for the children. The activities, an effort to restore an element of normality to the children's lives, were interrupted by the thunder of air strikes on Hizbollah's stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut. The children scattered. Some laughed, a few cried, but most appeared unfazed by the explosions that shook Beirut. "We stayed in our home through three days of bombing," said Mohammed Said, 13, a Palestinian from Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp in the southern suburbs. "I was scared the first time I heard the bombing. Now I'm just afraid for my younger brothers and sisters." Children who escape physical harm are still likely to suffer psychological damage. Volunteer psychologists are working with the displaced children to try to limit the damage. "As much as possible we are trying to alleviate the symptoms and the effects of the war which are common in many children in these circumstances -- depression and alienation," said psychologist Ola Attayeh. [source: Reuters]