QANA, Lebanon — With mattresses strapped precariously to the tops of their cars, the people poured back into Lebanon’s ravaged south yesterday.

Five abreast, they tumbled over the last undamaged crossing on the Litani River on roads that had been deserted 48 hours earlier but now heaved under chaotic traffic.

Southern Lebanon, which bore the brunt of the violence and remains partly occupied by Israeli troops, was beginning to come back to life.

Even as Red Cross workers pulled bodies out of the rubble from areas inaccessible until now, returning civilians swept the rocks from their homes and began to reopen their shops amid the devastation.

Members of the Hejazi family were dropped off by bus on the outskirts of Qana, where Israeli missiles brought down an apartment block, killing 28 civilians. Eleven-year-old Safa, the youngest, struggled along the road, her arms straining under the weight of a carpet tied up with string. Her four siblings and their parents followed anxiously, wondering if their house had survived intact. They staggered up the stairs in weary relief. Living room windows had been blown in, but otherwise everything seemed to be in place.

Safa ran into her bedroom and opened the wardrobe, giggling in delight as she pulled out her favorite clothes: a white chemise bought with her pocket money and a beige blouse embroidered with seashells. Her older sister, Rabab, walked silently through the living room in a more reflective mood.”I can’t believe I’m home again,” she whispered, turning to hide the tears falling from her eyes.

The Hejazi family was perhaps luckier than most of the 300,000 people who fled southern Lebanon. They took refuge not in a school or an underground car lot but with friends on the Chouf Mountains near Beirut.

On the street outside, a mechanic was sweeping the rubble from his garage, the owner of a supermarket was throwing away rotten cheese and vegetables, and young men began to sit in chairs on the street corners.

Small boys shinned up lampposts to hang the yellow flag of Hezbollah in preparation for the funerals of the dead still not buried weeks after heavy airstrikes.

Rukhaya Bolhas returned to the village of Sidiqine to find not just her house but her entire street destroyed. “They told me earlier my house had probably been destroyed, but I didn’t care then, and I don’t care now. We are victorious.”