Terrorists give world media a guided tour, and the media respond by obediently airing the terrorist propaganda: Militants put on a guided tour of the battlefield that is Beirut.

Hezbollah was anxious yesterday to give the international media a guided tour of its battered and deserted fiefdom. The group claims that families, not fighters, lived here.

As he stumbled over the rubble clogging every street, Hussain Nabulsi, Hezbollah’s spokesman, shouted: “Do you see rocket launchers, or an armoury of guns? There isn’t a barracks here, just homes.”

Ducking under electricty cables and telephone lines brought down by the bombardment, Mr Nabulsi pointed out where the offices of Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, once stood. But he rejected accusations that fighters were using civilians as human shields to hide in this vast residential area, which was home to half a million people.