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Mostly civilians died in IDF attack on Lebanon village, BBC finds

Nawal Al -Mustafi

Correspondence of the higher international investigations, BBC World

BBC Ashraf and Julia smiles the camera, with a background of green spaces. Ashraf has dark hair and beard and wears a dark shirt, and Julia has lighter brown hair - long and wavy - and has lips painted in bright colors.BBC

Ashraf (L) persuaded his sister Julia to join him in the family apartment, which he believed was safe from the strikes of the Israel Defense Army

Julia Ramadan was terrified – the war between Israel and Hezbollah was ascending and had a nightmare that was bombed. When her brother sent an audio note from her apartment in Beirut, he encouraged her to join him in Ain L Dale, a sleeping village in southern Lebanon.

“He is safe here,” reassured. “Come stay with us until things calm down.”

Earlier that month, Israel intensified the air campaigns against Hezbollah in Lebanon, in response to the escalating missile attacks by the Iranian -backed armed group that killed civilians, and has deployed tens of thousands of homes in northern Israel.

Ashraf was confident that their family’s apartment block would be a haven, so Julia joined him. But the next day, on September 29, was under the most bloody Israeli attack of this conflict. Israeli missiles struck the building of the entire six -storey building, killing 73 people.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) says that the building was targeted because it was a terrorist center in Hezbollah “the commander of Hezbollah. He added that the” overwhelming majority “of those who were killed in the strike” was confirmed by terrorist agents. “

But the BBC investigation was achieved from the identity of 68 out of 73 people who were killed in the attack and revealed evidence that only six were linked to the military wing of Hezbollah. None of those we have identified does not seem to have a great rank. The BBC World Service also found that the other 62 were civilians – 23 children.

Among the dead were only a few months old, such as Nouh Kobeissi in the -2B apartment. In the apartment -1C, the school teacher, Abeer Halak, was killed alongside her husband and three children. Three floors above, Amal Hakawati died with three generations of her family – her husband, her children and two grandchildren.

A photographic drawing entitled:

Ashraf and Julia were always soon, as they were sharing everything with each other. He says, “It was like a black box, and she held my beds,” he says.

On the afternoon of September 29, the siblings have just returned home from distributing food to the families who fled the fighting. Hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon have been displaced because of the war.

Ashraf was in the bathroom, and Julia was sitting in the living room with their father, which helped him download a video on social media. Their mother, Yannan, was in the kitchen, cleansing.

Then, without warning, they heard a deaf uproar. She shook the entire building, and pulled a huge cloud of dust and smoke in their apartment.

“She shouted, Julia! Julia!,” Ashraf says.

“I am here.”

“I looked at my father, who was struggling to wake up from the sofa due to a current leg injury, and I saw my mother heading towards the front door.”

Julia’s nightmare was playing in real life.

“Julia was excessive ventilation, crying hard on the sofa. I was trying to calm her and told her that we needed to go out. Then, there was another attack.”

Video footage of The Strike, joint and verified by the BBC, reveals four Israeli missiles that fly across the air towards the building. After seconds, the mass collapses.

Watch the missiles that struck the building, causing its collapse

Ashraf, along with many others, was trapped under the rubble. He started contacting him, but the only voice he heard was the health of his father, who told him that he could still hear Julia and that she was alive. None of them could hear Ashraf’s mother.

Ashraf sent a voice note to friends in the neighborhood to alert them. The next few hours were painful. He could hear the rescuers who were going out through the debris – and the residents were crying while discovering their dead loved ones. “I have been thinking, please, God, not Julia. I cannot live this life without Julia.”

Ashraf was finally pulled out of the rubble after hours, with just slight injuries.

He discovered that his mother had been rescued but died in the hospital. Gulia strangled the rubble. His father later told him that Julia’s recent words were invitations to her brother.

The map that shows the target residential building site - shows an enlargement at the location of the place where it was inside the Ein Deal, and a site from Ain El Dilb - near Sidon, and southern Beirut.

In November, the ceasefire deal was agreed between Israel and Hezbollah with the aim of ending the conflict. The deal gives a final date for 60 days to the Israeli forces to withdraw from southern Lebanon and Hezbollah to withdraw its forces and weapons north of the Litani River. As this deadline approached January 26, we sought to learn more about the bloody Israeli attack on Lebanon for years.

In the apartment below Julia and Ashraf, Haraa and Ali Faris were hosting the displaced family members because of the war. Among them was the sister of Hawra Patol, who, like Julia, had arrived on the previous day – with her husband and two young children. They fled intense bombing near the borders of Lebanon, Israel, in areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

“We have hesitated at the place of going,” Patol says. “Then I told my husband, let’s go to Ein de del. My sister said that their building was safe and that they could not hear any bombing nearby.”

Patol’s husband, Mohamed Fares, was killed in the Ain de del. A column fell on Patol and her children. Nobody says she answered her invitations to help. She finally managed to lift her on her own, but her four -year -old daughter Hawra was a fatal crush. Surprisingly, her child survived.

The Faris Hawra family, and her cousins, Hassan and Hussein, filmed together. Hawra wears a pink dress with puffs and a square neck line. The children of their general ones are both in the yellow cartoon dinosaurs.Prices family

Four-year-old Hawra with her cousin-the three killing the attack

Three floors below Patol lived Dennis and talents usury. On that Sunday, Dennis invited her brother Hisham for lunch.

Hisham says that the effect of the strike was brutally.

“The second missile criticized me on the ground … the entire wall fell above me.”

He spent seven hours under the rubble.

“I heard a sound far. People are talking. Scream and …” cover it. Take it out. Raise the stone. He is still alive. I mean … my God.

When Hisham was finally rescued, the preacher of his sister’s daughter was waiting for hearing if she was alive. He lied to him and told him that she is fine. They found her body three days.

Hisham lost four members of his family-his sister, their husband’s brother and two children. He told us that he lost his faith and no longer believes in God.

To find out more about who died, we analyzed the data of the Lebanese Ministry of Health, videos and social media, as well as speaking to the survivors of the attack.

We wanted in particular the interrogation of the Israeli defense army’s response to the media – immediately after the attack – that the apartment bloc was the Hezbollah leadership center. We asked the Israeli army several times what constitutes a command center, but it did not give an explanation.

Therefore, we started to sieve by greeting social media, cemeteries, public health records and funeral clips to determine whether those who were killed in the attack have any military affiliation with Hezbollah.

We were unable to find evidence that six of the 68 deadly dead that we had identified was linked to the Hezbollah’s military wing.

Hezballah Memorial pictures of the six men use the “Mujahid” sign, which means “fighter”. In contrast, the upper numbers are referred to as “QAID”, and this means “the leader” – and we did not find any such signs that the group uses to describe those who were killed.

We asked the IDF if the six Hezbollah fighters we set were the intended targets of the strike. He did not answer this question.

The drawing that shows the Ain El Delb building, with a highlight of three apartments where our shareholders live or reside: the Ramadan family in the 4A apartment, the Faris family in the 3A apartment and the Pope's family in the apartment -1

One of the Hezbollah fighters that we identified Patol, Mohamed Fares. Patol told us that her husband, like many other men in southern Lebanon, was as warning of the group, although she added that he had not received their salaries by Hezbollah, occupied an official rank, or participated in the fighting.

Israel sees Hezbollah one of its main threats, and the group has been appointed as a terrorist organization by Israel, and many Western governments and Arab Gulf states.

But in addition to its well -armed military wing, Hezbollah is a influential political party and holds seats in the Lebanese parliament. In many parts of the country, they are woven into the social fabric, providing a network of social services.

In response to our investigation, the Israeli Defense Army stated: “The strikes of the Israeli Defense Army are subject to the military targets of the provisions related to international law, including taking possible precautions, and are implemented after an evaluation that the expected side damage and civil losses are not overly related to the expected military advantage of the strike.” .

She also also told the BBC that it had executed “evacuation measures” to strike on the Ein Deal, but everyone we talked to said that they had not received any warning.

UN experts raised concerns about Fitting and the necessity of Israeli air strikes on residential buildings In densely populated areas in Lebanon.

This pattern was targeting the entire buildings – which led to great civilian losses – a frequent advantage in the latest conflict of Israel with Hezbollah, which began when the group escalated from missile attacks in response to the Israeli war in Gaza.

Between October 2023 and November 2024, the Lebanese authorities say more than 3,960 people were killed in Lebanon by the Israeli forces, and many of them are civilians. Over the same time period, the Israeli authorities say that at least 47 civilians were killed by Hezbollah’s Rottas, which was launched from southern Lebanon. At least 80 Israeli soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon or as a result of missile attacks on northern Israel.

The missile strike in Ain L Deer is the most bloody Israeli attack on a building in Lebanon for at least 18 years.

Scarlett Banter / BBC Rubble of the Apartment Block in the foreground, and in the background some residential blocks of various patterns, surrounds a mosque. Drilling yellow through waste.Scarlett Barter / BBC

Families continued to visit the destruction site after weeks to disrupt the rubble

The village is still inhabited by its influence. When we visited, after more than a month of strike, the father continued to visit the site every day, hoping that his 11 -year -old son’s news would be, his body was not found yet.

Ashraf Ramadan also returns to research in the rubble, and searches for the remaining memories that his family built over the two decades who lived there.

The door of his wardrobe, who is still decorated with pictures of football players and pop stars, appears to me. After that, he pulled a bear from debris and tells me that he was always on his bed.

He says: “Nothing I find here will compensate for the people we lost.”

Additional reports by Scarlett Barter and Jake Takshi

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/branded_news/1f0a/live/ecd7e970-d9ac-11ef-bc01-8f2c83dad217.jpg

2025-01-24 05:30:00

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