The Israeli airstrikes on my hometown of Shaqra, in the Bint Jbeil district, claimed the lives of 17 people, most of them civilians. Among the victims were two entire families. One, the Ghareeb family, was killed when their home in the Hay al-Housh area, south of the city of Tyre, was bombed. The other, the Badr al-Din family, was obliterated by a strike on their home in Shaqra. Another family from Shaqra, living in Bint Jbeil, also perished in the air raids. One of the victims was my relative, Youssef Al-Amin, who was killed in his home in Anqoun, in the Sidon district. Yousef was my contemporary; I used to see him in Jal al-Bahr in Beirut, in front of my son’s school. We’d have coffee together, exchanging only smiles and quiet camaraderie.
This is just a small map of those killed in the airstrikes who were connected to me—either through family or proximity. The fact that they were spread across different locations did nothing to lessen the likelihood of them being targeted. The targeting of civilians was so indiscriminate that two people from the same family were killed in different places. We’re talking about 1,100 airstrikes in less than five hours! Those fleeing the strikes from Shaqra towards Beirut were attacked on the road near Ghazieh—some 60 kilometers from where they first tried to escape. This actually happened.
These deadly maneuvers are unlike anything the people of southern Lebanon have ever experienced, even since Israel first began bombing their homes and cars. The Israeli army’s warnings for civilians to avoid areas where Hezbollah allegedly hid weapons were more like tasteless jokes. Who knows where Hezbollah hides its weapons? There were no weapons near the homes, and those who found out about hidden weapons only did so after they were killed by Israeli planes.
The Israeli airstrike strategy dictates that targeting a Hezbollah fighter or member must continue even if it results in “collateral damage”—civilian casualties that can be ten times the intended target. The Hezbollah members targeted were not on the front lines; they were killed in their homes, with their families and neighbors, or in ambulances and makeshift hospitals. There were no boundaries to this appetite for killing.
Even those of us living in Beirut, far from our villages, were not spared the horrors of death. This time, it reached us through the phones of relatives who captured the bombings far more closely than television cameras could. The videos arrived with the voices of people we knew crying out for help. It was the voice of Hussein Ali Diab that I heard, shouting: “The whole world is on fire… it hit right in the middle… look at the glass… the whole world is burning.” The voice came alongside footage of thick dust around the central square, recorded the moment the shell landed.
Shaqra, which had waited a year before being dragged into the devastation surrounding neighboring villages like Houla, Mais al-Jabal, and Blida, was hit all at once. In just a few hours, it was reduced to dust, joining the ring of destruction encircling it. Within moments, the news of casualties began to reach us.
This time, we tracked the fate of our village not through TV screens but through the desperate voices of our loved ones in phone videos. Perhaps it wasn’t actually Hussein’s voice I heard in the video. My brother later saw him in Sidon, parked near the old castle with an elderly woman sleeping in the back seat of his car. He told my brother she was his mother-in-law, who was bedridden, and that he was waiting for someone to direct him to a school where he could find refuge. So, it seems that wasn’t Hussein’s voice after all.
We no longer rely on TV to learn about what’s happening in our villages during this war. Phones are faster, more agile, and more accurate. WhatsApp groups deliver footage of airstrikes quicker than Al Jazeera, focusing on the specific areas of the people sharing the content, unlike TV stations that report general news and aren’t concerned with the smaller tragedies.
Ironically, the same phones that Israel hacked to send threatening messages to residents also delivered the horrific images of the massacres they committed. We receive many videos that we can’t bear to forward.
The entire Badr al-Din family was wiped out by an airstrike. When I received the news, I tried to avoid learning their names, as one of my mother’s friends, her pilgrimage companion, was from the Badr al-Din family. In the midst of these bombings, I couldn’t bear to picture that woman’s face. I preferred not to know.
Later, I decided to step away from the phone groups. Getting this close to the nightmare isn’t helpful. The bad news will reach us either way, and it serves no purpose to document it visually.
One video I received showed the funeral prayers for two victims from Shaqra, their remains gathered in two plastic bags. Only a handful of paramedics stood behind the town’s imam as he prayed. That image has haunted me ever since I saw the video—an imam praying, grief-stricken, with silent paramedics behind him, and in front of them, two plastic bags containing the remains of two people.
