'This is a crime': Lebanese families fled the south only to succumb to airstrikes farther north

Zahraa Badreddine lies wrapped up in a white blanket in a hospital bed at the Labib Medical Centre, in Lebanon's coastal city of Sidon, an IV drip at her side.

Badreddine's face is flecked with small wounds, and the tears caught in her thick eyelashes seem to be holding back the weight of her grief.     

She was pulled from the wreckage of an Israeli airstrike that brought down two apartment buildings in the nearby village of Ain el-Delb last Sunday.    

"My eye, my stomach," she said when asked about her injuries. "There are parts of the rocket in my arms and leg."  

But these are not the source of her pain. Her two sons, 13-year-old Ali and nine-year-old Mohamad, were both killed in the attack.

"Ali was beside me," she said, wiping away tears that finally fell. "I see him. How he fell down. How he died. But Mohamad, I did not see, because he was in the building. I didn't see him."  

According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, more than 1,400 people have been killed and some 7,000 injured since Israel intensified its air assault against what it describes as Hezbollah targets some two weeks ago.  

Adding to Badreddine's tragedy is that she brought her children to Ain el-Delb from the southern city of Nabatieh in an effort to protect them, deciding like hundreds of thousands of others to flee escalating attacks. 

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have since warned residents in dozens of Lebanese towns and villages in the south to move north for their own safety. 

"A lot of bombs [were] around us," said Badreddine. "I thought here was more safe, but it is not. Israel is a killer. It kills kids, women."  

Over 1 million displaced

More than one million people have now been displaced in Lebanon, according to the Lebanese government and UN agencies.  

The IDF says it is targeting Hezbollah positions, weapons depots and infrastructure as it seeks to remove the threat of the group's missiles, aimed mainly at northern Israel.  

Hezbollah, the most powerful military force in Lebanon as well as a political and a social movement, has been firing missiles at Israel for almost a year, in solidarity with Hamas militants who attacked Israeli border communities next to Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 and taking 250 hostage, Israeli figures say. 

Israel's subsequent ground invasion of Gaza has killed nearly 42,000, according to Palestinian counts, and decimated the territory. 

In Lebanon, with each new wave of Israeli airstrikes, many say they feel the echoes of the war in Gaza approaching.  

Search-and-rescue efforts underway

"Nowhere is safe," said Abdul Basset, a father of two who lives next to the Israeli strike site in Ain el-Delb and was one of the first to join in rescue efforts. 

"Even if we go north, it is not safe. We will stay here in our land, and we trust that God will keep us here safe in our houses."  

Forty-five people — including Basset's cousin and his cousin's family — were killed in the airstrike, according to Lebanese authorities. Locals say the count has climbed since then. 

Bulldozers were brought in near where Basset lives for the search-and-rescue effort, but huge piles of concrete rubble remain, run through with reminders of lives lived. 

There was a bathtub turned on its side like a capsized boat, cooking pots, lone shoes and a set of worry beads. 

Some survivors, including a couple, returned to the scene in the hopes of recovering what belongings they could. They found a backpack and gathered up some clothes, the woman finding a passport with which she seemed unsure of what to do.    

"There are not any military targets here," said Basset. "We were sitting here peacefully. Nobody gave us a warning. This is a crime."  

'I was screaming and shouting'

Back in the Labib Medical Centre, where Zahraa Badreddine lies mourning her children, another Zahraa is in a hospital bed, putting on a brave face. 

Eight-year-old Zahraa Riad Assi's mother was killed in the same Israeli airstrike that took Badreddine's children.  

She is small and frail, but looks older and wiser than her years, tsk-tsking if she is asked a silly question.  

Also first displaced by the Israeli air campaign in the south, Riad Assi easily describes what she was doing when the missiles struck in Ain el-Delb.

"I was playing outside. They hit the building and the building collapsed. Then they hit where I was playing. Somebody carried me and put me on the ground. Then he carried me to a car."  

She has injuries on both legs, including a bone-deep flesh wound.  

"I was not crying. I was screaming and shouting because it [was] so painful," she said.  

Although she doesn't mention it, her brother says Zahraa knows her mother is dead. They lost their brother, too. But his body has yet to be found under the rubble.