Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International (LBCI) correspondent Tania Mehanna described the July War are the “worst war” she has ever witnessed during her coverage.

Mehanna’s comments came during the first Women’s League meeting on Monday in the presence of around 50 women members at the Bathish Auditorium in West Hall.

She said that her experience in covering wars included the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Lebanon. She had left Lebanon before the war to cover the Lebanese Patriarch Nasrallah’s visit to the United States, but she returned to the country during the war and reported on the tragic events. She further discussed the obstacles that the journalists faced, such as the impossibility of transportation at many areas in Lebanon, the problem of insecurity and the censorship of some material in fear of being labeled “pro-Israeli.”

Mehanna’s talk offered some implicit political messages as she presented to the audience one of her broadcasts where she was reporting on the area of Shiyyah, an area that was the target of a number of Israeli air raids.

After some of the viewers moaned at the sight of torn, dead bodies, Mehanna said, “No one has the right to launch a war and expect not to see such images.”

When Outlook asked her how sheseparates her prejudices from her reports, Mehanna said that it is hard to remain objective but that she tries to report “in a humane way and tries to show the truth.”

“The Women’s League is a group that was established in 1919 to bring together the wives of American faculty and women from Ras Beirut,” President of the league Marianne Heath told Outlook. With time, the purpose changed and now the members engage in a variety of activities that ranges from raising funds for financial aid to helping the poor and the prisoners, to taking part in awareness and cleaning campaigns.

In its good old days, the league also helped preparing bandages and bed sheets for the American University Hospital and knitting blankets for the army during World War II. In 1943, the league joined the national protest against the French Mandate in Lebanon in 1943.

Over the past three years, they raised an annual $5000 scholarship to be donated to a physically challenged student at AUB.

In November, they will invite representatives from the Beirut Marathon to give a presentation about their activity.