Scattered among the rubble of shattered houses, right where they landed when their owners’ lives were blown apart, lay playing cards; a packet of dried noodles; prayer beads; a science book; jigsaw pieces; even a university quiz on spotting logical fallacies.
One set of victims included two men and a woman, another were adjacent Christian and Muslim families celebrating a birthday, according to neighbours.
Locals accuse Israel of targeting anyone living in areas known to vote for Hizbullah, which is a militant group but also a social movement and political party. “There is no Hizbullah here,” a man said, standing beside what remained of the destroyed homes.
In total, 14 people died on this site, he said. There was just one survivor, he added: a three-year-old girl.
Emily Tripp, the director of British conflict monitor Airwars, has called the current Israeli assault on Lebanon “the most intense aerial campaign that we know of in the last 20 years”, aside from Gaza.
Israel says the aim of its operations in Lebanon is to allow tens of thousands of its citizens displaced from northern Israel by Hizbullah bombardments during the Gaza war to return home safely.
As it attempts a land invasion in Lebanon’s south, and continues with air strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, the Bekaa Valley in the east has also become a war zone. Previously known for its beauty, vineyards and fertile land, now its people speak as if they expect bombs or missiles to fall from the sky at any moment.
More than 1,974 people across Lebanon have been killed by Israeli attacks since last October, the majority of them in the past few weeks, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
“What has been happening in Lebanon, or even in Palestine, is very similar to what was happening in Ukraine, but no one treats it the same,” said the 28-year-old co-ordinator of Kab-Elias school in west Bekaa, which has suddenly been turned into a shelter for 150 displaced people.
The man asked only to be identified by his first name, Hussein, and said the displaced people he caters for are tired of speaking to journalists. “People are just watching our death. It is making it more normal to be okay with seeing these kind of massacres.”
He said he hears five or six bombings a day, calling Israel “a beast that’s looking to eliminate us, to ethnically cleanse us”.
“We don’t accept to be inferior human beings to anyone,” Hussein continued, quoting an Arabic phrase he identifies with. “If you don’t want to stand in solidarity with our rockets, then we don’t need your solidarity with our dead bodies.”
In another Bekaa town, Lebanese medics sat in plastic chairs beside an ambulance, drinking coffee and waiting for the inevitable next call. Some colleagues now refuse to go to regularly targeted places, one said. Even highways and roads can be hit, said another.
On Thursday, the World Health Organisation said at least 28 on-duty medics had been killed in Lebanon in the previous 24 hours.
Though Hizbullah’s supporters are traditionally Shia, their fight against Israel is winning wider support. From their balcony overlooking a flat, green stretch of Bekaa agricultural land, a Sunni family described spending two weeks observing Israeli air strikes in the distance. The mother raised her hand and dropped it, her fingers spreading to indicate blasts on impact.
Her son said Hizbullah “protect my village and lovely Lebanon”. He gestured to the landscape around him. “[Israel] can’t take my land and my country. I am with Hizbullah. If they need me, I will begin to fight.”
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