A dispatch from the site of the aftermath of Israeli airstrike in central Beirut at 4 am that killed at least 15 people, including children and injured dozens
Hanna Davis
Beirut
23 November, 2024
THE NEW ARAB
A child’s robe found in the rubble of an Israeli airstrike on Basta al-Fawqa [Philippe Pernot]
Beirut was jolted awake last night by deadly Israeli airstrikes, which hit in the heart of the Lebanese capital without warning at around 4 am, levelling an entire apartment block.
The attack was the fourth this week on central Beirut — coming as Israeli airstrikes on the country have markedly intensified since US envoy Amos Achstein ended his visit to the region on Wednesday, with ceasefire efforts stuck at the door of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel now wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Gaza, though not yet in Lebanon.
Around noon on Saturday, rescue workers were still searching for survivors amid a massive pile of rubble, once an eight-story apartment building in the densely-populated Basta neighbourhood.
Dozens of the neighbourhood’s residents and relatives of those killed were gathered at the scene of the strike. Some stood quiet, in shock. Others had tears in their eyes, leaning on those around them for support.
Security was tense, with the press not allowed to go near the demolished building. As a body was brought toward an ambulance on standby, one of the multiple soldiers standing guard demanded cameras be turned off.
Israeli media claimed the Basta strike targeted a high-ranking Hezbollah official, but the group later denied any of its officials were present in the site.
Lebanon’s health ministry has reported that 15 people were killed and 63 injured, including men, women and children. The toll will likely be higher, as search and rescue efforts continue.
There was no evacuation order given prior to the strike, in the early hours of the morning when most of the neighbourhood was asleep.
‘An entire family killed’
On the outskirts of the crowd, a 25-year-old woman cried, comforted by her friend beside her. She was mourning her relatives killed in the attack, including 5-year-old Muhammad Ali, 9-year-old Fatima, and another 13-year-old girl, also named Fatima.
The woman, who requested to remain anonymous, said they had been living in the building with nine others — including their grandparents — for about a month after fleeing their home in Beirut’s southern suburbs, under heavy Israeli bombardment.
“An entire family was killed. It was such a shock,” she told TNA, in tears.
Over 3,650 people have been killed and more than 15,200 wounded by Israeli fire in Lebanon since October 2023, when Hezbollah initiated exchanges of fire with Israel in support of Gaza, as it claims.
Over the past two months, Israel has severely escalated its attacks throughout Lebanon.
Around the corner from the demolished building, Issam Abdullah, 55, was taking a break in a small cafe. Abdullah, a member of Lebanon’s civil defence, had just spent almost eight hours picking through the rubble for human remains.
He told TNA the bodies he removed from the rubble were unidentifiable, many of them in pieces. But he was sure at least two were children, by the size of their tiny, fragmented limbs.
“One wore a small blue bracelet, around her small hand,” he recounted.
Neighbourhood destroyed
Saturday’s strike hit just a building away from the location of another Israeli strike, in early October. Along the street not only homes, but also shops were destroyed, eroding both residents’ livelihoods and sense of security.
Abu Ali Bazaza’s mini-market — which he had been running for 45 years — was turned to rubble on Saturday. The market was on the building’s first floor, where he sold foodstuffs like hummus, sugar, and rice.
Next to his shop he said there was also a one-dollar shop and jewellery store, all now just debris.
“My work is now gone, what will I do?,” Bazaza told TNA, “I’m 67 years old, who would hire me?”
He said the families living in the building often came to his shop, noting that each floor had about two apartments. On the first floor there was a woman and her son and on the second, a man lived with his sister, Bazaza said.
He estimated there were around 25 people living in the building, including multiple displaced families, whom he believes were all killed.
“The house, the car, we can replace them, we can rebuild, but the soul, it cannot come back,” he added.
Nearby, Samih Masri, 31, sat outside his butchery, watching the rescue workers clear the rubble. He had just repaired his shop’s glass windows, which had been shattered by an Israeli strike in early October.
Before Israel’s escalation, his was one of around 20 shops, including hair salons, bakeries, and perfume stores, along the street. Now, most have been shuttered.
After Saturday’s strike Bazaza said he had lost hope too and would also have to close his doors, parting with his business of eight years. “There’s no more work,” he said, sighing.
‘We don’t have anywhere else to go’
Almost all of the buildings around the scene of the strike were damaged. Across the street, a woman swept the broken glass and debris covering her balcony. Below her, on the first floor, Zainab Ramo, 55, had just finished sweeping up the dust from her home and had just begun to cook eggs for herself and husband.
She said they had barely slept after the strike. “Of course, I am scared,” she told TNA, “I thought we would die.”
Both Israeli strikes in the area— in early October and yesterday — hit just meters away from Ramo’s home of 50 years, owned by her grandfather.
She said that her intense and near-constant fear since the strike in early October had given her diabetes and high blood pressure, and she was now on multiple medications. But, “we don’t have anywhere else to go”, she said.
The door to their kitchen had blown off and a piece landed on their daughter’s leg. Luckily, she said that with rest and pain medication, she would be okay.
Ramo’s neighbours were not so lucky. "I used to pass them, and say hello," she said, “I knew the caretaker [of the building], her, her husband, and children all passed away,” she said.
Outside Ramo's building a banner was still hung, in memory of those killed in early October, and a constant reminder of the death and destruction at her doorstep. “There were so many people who died,” she said.
[All photos by Philippe Pernot]
Lebanon’s Shiite Muslims pay high price in war between Israel and Hezbollah
Israel has concentrated its attacks on villages in southern and northeastern Lebanon and neighborhoods south of Beirut, where a large numbers of Shiites who are not Hezbollah members live. (AP)
AP
November 25, 2024
BEIRUT: The Lebanese civilians most devastated by the Israel- Hezbollah war are Shiite Muslims, and many of them believe they are being unfairly punished because they share a religious identity with Hezbollah militants and often live in the same areas.
“This is clear,” said Wael Murtada, a young Shiite man who anxiously watched paramedics search rubble after a recent Israeli airstrike destroyed his uncle’s two-story home and killed 10 people. “Who else is being attacked?”
Israel has concentrated its attacks on villages in southern and northeastern Lebanon and neighborhoods south of Beirut. This is where many Hezbollah militants operate from, and their families live side by side with large numbers of Shiites who aren’t members of the group.
Israel insists its war is with Hezbollah and not the Lebanese people – or the Shiite faith. It says it only targets members of the Iran-backed militant group to try to end their yearlong campaign of firing rockets over the border. But Israel’s stated objectives mean little to people like Murtada as growing numbers of Shiite civilians also die in a war that escalated sharply in recent months.
Shiites don’t just measure the suffering of their community in deaths and injuries. Entire blocks of the coastal city of Tyre have been flattened. Large parts of the historic market in the city of Nabatiyeh, which dates to the Ottoman era, have been destroyed. And in Baalbek, an airstrike damaged the city’s famed Hotel Palmyra, which opened in the late 19th century, and a home that dates to the Ottoman era.
“Lebanese Shias are being collectively punished. Their urban areas are being destroyed, and their cultural monuments and building are being destroyed,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.
As Shiites flee their war-torn villages and neighborhoods, the conflict is increasingly following them to other parts of Lebanon, and this is fueling tensions.
Scores of people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes on Christian, Sunni and Druze areas where displaced Shiites had taken refuge. Many residents in these areas now think twice before providing shelter to displaced people out of fear they may have links to Hezbollah.
“The Israelis are targeting all of Lebanon,” said Wassef Harakeh, a lawyer from Beirut’s southern suburbs who in 2022 ran against Hezbollah in the country’s parliamentary elections and whose office was recently demolished by an Israeli airstrike. He believes part of Israel’s goal is to exacerbate frictions within the small Mediterranean country, which has a long history of sectarian fighting even though diverse groups live together peacefully these days.
Some Shiites say statements from the Israeli military over the years have only reinforced suspicions that their wider community is being targeted as a means to put pressure on Hezbollah.
One commonly cited example is the so-called Dahiyeh doctrine, which was first espoused by Israeli generals during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. It is a reference to the southern suburbs of Beirut where Hezbollah is headquartered and where entire residential blocks, bridges and shopping compounds were destroyed in both wars. Israel says Hezbollah hides weapons and fighters in such areas, turning them into legitimate military targets.
A video released by the Israeli military last month has been interpreted by Shiites as further proof that little distinction is being made between Hezbollah fighters and Shiite civilians.
Speaking from a southern Lebanese village he did not name, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari called it “a terror base. This is a Lebanese village, a Shiite village built by Hezbollah.” As he toured a house and showed stocks of hand grenades, rifles, night-vision goggles and other military equipment, Hagari said: “Every house is a terror base.”
Another army spokesperson disputed the notion that Israel tries to blur the line between combatants and civilians. “Our war is with the terror group Hezbollah and not with the Lebanese population, whatever its origin,” said Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani. He denied that Israel was intentionally trying to disrupt the social fabric of Lebanon, and pointed to Israel’s evacuation warnings to civilians ahead of airstrikes as a step it takes to mitigate harm.
Many Lebanese, including some Shiites, blame Hezbollah for their suffering, while also decrying Israel’s bombardments. Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel last year the day after Hamas attacked Israel and started the war in Gaza; this went against the group’s promises to use its weapons only to defend Lebanon.
Since last October, more than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon, and women and children accounted for more than 900 of the dead, according to the Health Ministry.
The death and destruction in Lebanon ramped up significantly in mid-September, when Israeli airstrikes began targeting Hezbollah’s leaders, and once again in early October, when Israeli ground troops invaded.
Early in the war, Israeli airstrikes killed about 500 Hezbollah members but caused very little collateral damage. But since late September, airstrikes have destroyed entire buildings and homes, and in some cases killed dozens of civilians when the intended target was one Hezbollah member or official.
On one particularly bloody day, Sept. 23, Israeli airstrikes killed almost 500 people and prompted hundreds of thousands of people – again, mostly Shiites — to flee their homes in panic.
Murtada’s relatives fled from Beirut’s southern suburbs in late September after entire blocks had been wiped out by airstrikes. They moved 22 kilometers (about 14 miles) east of the city, to the predominantly Druze mountain village of Baalchmay to stay in the home of Murtada’s uncle.
Then, on Nov. 12, the home where they sought refuge was destroyed without warning. The airstrike killed nine relatives — three men, three women and three children — and a domestic worker, Murtada said.
The Israeli army said the home was being used by Hezbollah. Murtada, who lost a grandmother and an aunt in the strike, said nobody in the home was connected to the militant group.
Hezbollah has long boasted about its ability to deter Israel, but the latest war has proven otherwise and taken a severe toll on its leadership.
Some Shiites fear the weakening of Hezbollah will lead to the entire community being sidelined politically once the war is over. But others believe it could offer a political opening for more diverse Shiite voices.
Ceasefire negotiations to end the Israel-Hezbollah appear to have gained momentum over the past week. Some critics of Hezbollah say the group could have accepted months ago the conditions currently under consideration.
This would have spared Lebanon “destruction, martyrs and losses worth billions (of dollars),” Lebanese legislator Waddah Sadek, who is Sunni Muslim, wrote on X.
Many Shiite Muslims believe they are being unfairly punished because they share a religious identity with Hezbollah and often live in the same areas
Israel has concentrated its attacks on villages in southern and northeastern Lebanon and neighborhoods south of Beirut, where a large numbers of Shiites who are not Hezbollah members live. (AP)
AP
November 25, 2024
BEIRUT: The Lebanese civilians most devastated by the Israel- Hezbollah war are Shiite Muslims, and many of them believe they are being unfairly punished because they share a religious identity with Hezbollah militants and often live in the same areas.
“This is clear,” said Wael Murtada, a young Shiite man who anxiously watched paramedics search rubble after a recent Israeli airstrike destroyed his uncle’s two-story home and killed 10 people. “Who else is being attacked?”
Israel has concentrated its attacks on villages in southern and northeastern Lebanon and neighborhoods south of Beirut. This is where many Hezbollah militants operate from, and their families live side by side with large numbers of Shiites who aren’t members of the group.
Israel insists its war is with Hezbollah and not the Lebanese people – or the Shiite faith. It says it only targets members of the Iran-backed militant group to try to end their yearlong campaign of firing rockets over the border. But Israel’s stated objectives mean little to people like Murtada as growing numbers of Shiite civilians also die in a war that escalated sharply in recent months.
Shiites don’t just measure the suffering of their community in deaths and injuries. Entire blocks of the coastal city of Tyre have been flattened. Large parts of the historic market in the city of Nabatiyeh, which dates to the Ottoman era, have been destroyed. And in Baalbek, an airstrike damaged the city’s famed Hotel Palmyra, which opened in the late 19th century, and a home that dates to the Ottoman era.
“Lebanese Shias are being collectively punished. Their urban areas are being destroyed, and their cultural monuments and building are being destroyed,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.
As Shiites flee their war-torn villages and neighborhoods, the conflict is increasingly following them to other parts of Lebanon, and this is fueling tensions.
Scores of people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes on Christian, Sunni and Druze areas where displaced Shiites had taken refuge. Many residents in these areas now think twice before providing shelter to displaced people out of fear they may have links to Hezbollah.
“The Israelis are targeting all of Lebanon,” said Wassef Harakeh, a lawyer from Beirut’s southern suburbs who in 2022 ran against Hezbollah in the country’s parliamentary elections and whose office was recently demolished by an Israeli airstrike. He believes part of Israel’s goal is to exacerbate frictions within the small Mediterranean country, which has a long history of sectarian fighting even though diverse groups live together peacefully these days.
Some Shiites say statements from the Israeli military over the years have only reinforced suspicions that their wider community is being targeted as a means to put pressure on Hezbollah.
One commonly cited example is the so-called Dahiyeh doctrine, which was first espoused by Israeli generals during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. It is a reference to the southern suburbs of Beirut where Hezbollah is headquartered and where entire residential blocks, bridges and shopping compounds were destroyed in both wars. Israel says Hezbollah hides weapons and fighters in such areas, turning them into legitimate military targets.
A video released by the Israeli military last month has been interpreted by Shiites as further proof that little distinction is being made between Hezbollah fighters and Shiite civilians.
Speaking from a southern Lebanese village he did not name, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari called it “a terror base. This is a Lebanese village, a Shiite village built by Hezbollah.” As he toured a house and showed stocks of hand grenades, rifles, night-vision goggles and other military equipment, Hagari said: “Every house is a terror base.”
Another army spokesperson disputed the notion that Israel tries to blur the line between combatants and civilians. “Our war is with the terror group Hezbollah and not with the Lebanese population, whatever its origin,” said Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani. He denied that Israel was intentionally trying to disrupt the social fabric of Lebanon, and pointed to Israel’s evacuation warnings to civilians ahead of airstrikes as a step it takes to mitigate harm.
Many Lebanese, including some Shiites, blame Hezbollah for their suffering, while also decrying Israel’s bombardments. Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel last year the day after Hamas attacked Israel and started the war in Gaza; this went against the group’s promises to use its weapons only to defend Lebanon.
Since last October, more than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon, and women and children accounted for more than 900 of the dead, according to the Health Ministry.
More than 1 million people have been displaced from their homes. Shiites, who make up a third of Lebanon’s 5 million people, have borne the brunt of this suffering. Israel says it has killed well over 2,000 Hezbollah members in the past year.
The death and destruction in Lebanon ramped up significantly in mid-September, when Israeli airstrikes began targeting Hezbollah’s leaders, and once again in early October, when Israeli ground troops invaded.
Early in the war, Israeli airstrikes killed about 500 Hezbollah members but caused very little collateral damage. But since late September, airstrikes have destroyed entire buildings and homes, and in some cases killed dozens of civilians when the intended target was one Hezbollah member or official.
On one particularly bloody day, Sept. 23, Israeli airstrikes killed almost 500 people and prompted hundreds of thousands of people – again, mostly Shiites — to flee their homes in panic.
Murtada’s relatives fled from Beirut’s southern suburbs in late September after entire blocks had been wiped out by airstrikes. They moved 22 kilometers (about 14 miles) east of the city, to the predominantly Druze mountain village of Baalchmay to stay in the home of Murtada’s uncle.
Then, on Nov. 12, the home where they sought refuge was destroyed without warning. The airstrike killed nine relatives — three men, three women and three children — and a domestic worker, Murtada said.
The Israeli army said the home was being used by Hezbollah. Murtada, who lost a grandmother and an aunt in the strike, said nobody in the home was connected to the militant group.
Hezbollah has long boasted about its ability to deter Israel, but the latest war has proven otherwise and taken a severe toll on its leadership.
Some Shiites fear the weakening of Hezbollah will lead to the entire community being sidelined politically once the war is over. But others believe it could offer a political opening for more diverse Shiite voices.
Ceasefire negotiations to end the Israel-Hezbollah appear to have gained momentum over the past week. Some critics of Hezbollah say the group could have accepted months ago the conditions currently under consideration.
This would have spared Lebanon “destruction, martyrs and losses worth billions (of dollars),” Lebanese legislator Waddah Sadek, who is Sunni Muslim, wrote on X.
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