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Many residents of the central Beirut neighbourhood of Burj Abi Haidar were packing their bags and loading them into their cars on Friday, after an Israeli strike destroyed a residential building on their street, leaving the surrounding buildings uninhabitable.
It was one of two separate Israeli air strikes on central Beirut that hit residential buildings in the adjacent neighbourhoods of Burj Abi Haidar and Ras El Nabaa on Thursday night. Residents were stunned by the toll from the deadliest attack on central Beirut since the war began: at least 22 killed and 117 wounded, according to Lebanon's ministry of health.
The Israeli army gave no warning to residents.
“There's no Hezbollah here. We're all civilians. May god never forgive them for what they've done,” an elderly woman told The National as she left Burj Abi Haidar, her home of 20 years.
Israeli media reported that Hezbollah security official Wafic Safa, who played a key role in negotiations with Israel during the 2006 war, was the target of the strikes. Reuters reported that he survived, although Hezbollah and the Israeli army have not officially commented.
Rescue operations were continuing at the Burj Abi Haidar site on Friday, with mechanical excavators digging through the ruins of the collapsed building. Walid Hashash, area head of civil defence operations, told The National they had recovered 13 bodies.
He said the civil defence teams feared the death toll would rise due to the “many displaced people who were staying in the building”. He added: “We don’t have a list of how many or who they were.”
As official search operations continued, residents scoured the rubble, attempting to salvage what remained of their belongings. Next door to the collapsed apartment building, a group of siblings picked through the remains of their family business, a sweetshop. They poured boxes of dusty chocolates and confections into plastic bags and picked glass out of containers.
A neighbour asked the group's mother, Raghad, if everyone in her family was all right. “Thank god, only Marwa had to go to the hospital,” she answered in a tired voice. “She's OK. Ahmad was also hurt, but lightly.”
Rescue operations stopped overnight because the structural integrity of the surrounding buildings had been compromised, Mr Hashash said. However, they resumed on Friday morning.
Residents of Burj Abi Haidar and nearby neighbourhoods said they had worked by the light of their phones to uncover bodies and try to find survivors until civil defence teams arrived.
“I was walking home when the building was hit,” said Taha, a 17-year-old student who lives in the nearby neighbourhood of Aicha Bakkar. “I ran over to help. When I tell you three-quarters of the people we pulled out of the wreckage were already dead, I'm not exaggerating.”
“It was mostly us digging through the wreckage until civil defence teams got here,” he told The National. “The scene was horrific.”
Another witness said he also helped dig through the ruins to find people alive under the building. “We followed a young man who was screaming that his parents were on the ground floor,” he said.
“When I glanced down, I saw what looked like a mass of hair inside the dust and concrete,” the witness said, declining to use his name. “We started digging through the rubble. We dug up a young man. His legs were splayed out, broken. So were his arms and fingers. He’d been completely crushed.”
“The guy we followed saw us digging and saw the body we’d dug up. He came close to look at him and then he started wailing: ’That’s my brother, that’s my brother, they killed my brother.'”
The young man had stepped into the rubble and leaned close to inspect his brother's face. “As we kept digging, it turned out that he was standing right on top of his dad’s body. His father and his brother were killed right next to each other,” the witness said.
The twin strikes on Burj Abi Haidar and Ras Al Nabaa are the third such incident in central Beirut in recent weeks. Israel had made clear its priority to “degrade” Hezbollah by launching an extensive aerial assault on areas of Lebanon and conducting ground invasions in the southern part of the country.
Strikes on the centre of the capital have gained frequency, although most are concentrated in Beirut's southern suburbs.
“We targeted a lot in Dahieh because that is where lots of the [Hezbollah] leadership was,” retired Israeli army brig gen Amir Avivi told The National following the twin strikes on the capital. “But they are going to other places and Israel will target them elsewhere, too. When there is an opportunity to strike, [the Israeli army] do.”
The death toll since September 23 has exceeded 1,500, according to Lebanese health authorities. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened Lebanon this week with “destruction” similar to that in Gaza.
“The army will target anywhere,” Gen Avivi said.
Additional reporting by Lizzie Porter in Jerusalem
