Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow yesterday blogged from the heart of the Israeli trouble spot.

In his 'Dawn in Haifa' posting, Snow reported being woken on Monday morning by air raid sirens in the costal city.

He wrote: "The government says that when you hear them, you have one minute to get to the air raid shelter.

"In our case we were on the 12th floor of the Panorama Hotel and any prospect of so doing was nil.

"So we took to filming from the balcony. Of course nothing happened."

His colleague, picture editor Dini Patel, is blogging on life in Beirut under the Israeli bombardment.

Patel wrote: "The mass exodus continues out of the city and Beirut is beginning to resemble a ghost town on a daily basis.

"Increasingly we too are unable to move around freely to do our job, as strategic roads are destroyed. We too must consider our exit plan and daily assess our safety.

"Parts of the city are now becoming too dangerous for us to go to and the bombing raids are sporadic other then occasion leaflet drops telling us what we already know."

Jon Snow went on to report that large areas of Northern Israel were now deserted, with people spending extraordinary quantities of time below ground.

He also reported in his Snowmail blog, which also goes out as a daily email newsletter, about a side of Israel, in Haifa, few often see.

"A totally integrated section of town - Arab shopkeepers, Jewish customers - thriving business.

"Except that the business was pretty dead because everybody's been told to stay at home."

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