(08-08) 13:56 PDT ON THE LEBANON-SYRIA BORDER, (AP) --
Carrying luggage and infants, a couple hundred Lebanese and foreigners stepped around craters left behind from Israeli airstrikes and debris from a destroyed immigration office as they fled war-torn Lebanon for Syria on Tuesday.
Desperate for food, shelter and medicine, they risked being hit by Israeli bombs as they walked along the Beirut-Damascus highway and through the Masnaa border crossing to escape the escalating violence in Lebanon.
"Israel's daily attacks of the crossings and roads will not prevent us from crossing by all means," said Rakan al-Saedi, 45, from the central Lebanese town of Zahle.
The highway, which links the two countries' capitals, once handled hundreds of cars, buses and trucks daily. But after Israeli attacks destroyed large swaths of the road, making traveling by car impossible, fleeing on foot is the only way to cross the border.
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