Assessing damage: Rescuers check a building targeted by an Israeli air strike in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh on Thursday.
| Photo Credit: AFP
Hussein Barjawi had invited his daughter, her husband and their two young sons to dinner in south Lebanon, but an Israeli strike nearly wiped them all out, an official said on Thursday.
At least five family members — Hussein Barjawi, his daughters Amani and Zeinab, his sister Fatima and Zeinab’s son Mahmud Amer — were killed in the strike in the city of Nabatiyeh, Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported.
It was the bloodiest civilian toll from a single strike on Lebanon since cross-border hostilities erupted in October between Israel and Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement.
And the death toll could go even higher, with NNA reporting that Barjawi’s wife and niece were still unaccounted for, while Hussein Amer, a small boy, was pulled alive from the rubble.
Amin Shomar, a local official in south Lebanon, said Ali Amer, his wife and their two sons, aged three and four, had been “invited over to his father-in-law’s house in Nabatiyeh for dinner”.
Mr. Amer was “badly wounded” in the strike and was taken to hospital, Mr. Shomar said, while his wife and son were killed and his other son was pulled out from the rubble alive.
Video circulating on social media purportedly showed the rescue of the boy, his face bloody and wearing a blue tracksuit, a mattress among the debris beside him.
Near-daily fire
The Israeli military and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group have been trading near daily cross-border fire since the Israel-Hamas war broke out in October. The Lebanese group saying it is acting in support of Palestinian ally Hamas with its attacks on Israel.
Ten people including two Hezbollah fighters were killed in Israeli strikes in south Lebanon on Wednesday, the NNA and the group said, while an Israeli soldier was killed by unclaimed rocket fire from Lebanon.
Tarek Mroueh, 35, who works in a pharmaceutical company, expressed shock at the sudden violence that rocked his neighbourhood in Nabatiyeh.
He said he initially thought a Hezbollah member’s house might have been targeted. “But then we learnt that it was Hussein Barjawi’s building. He’s a civilian, not affiliated with any political party,” Mroueh said.
Mohammed Bdeir, a mechanic whose workshop is nearby, said that “civilians were targeted and everybody knows it”.
“There is no military objective here,” the 67-year-old added.
