Six concrete blocks sink into the freshly turned red earth of the cemetery. Six tombstones for six brothers and sisters, killed in an Israeli bombing. “Don’t cry my friend, you have to be strong”, whispers a man, placing his hand on the shoulder of an older man.
The day before, all of Mohammed’s children died under the rubble of their house, destroyed by an airstrike. Frozen, his eyes fixed on the graves where a few orange flowers are already wilting, this father lists their first names and their ages. “I hope they all meet in heaven,” he said. The youngest, Arij, was only 3 years old.
Mohammed lost six children during an Israeli bombing.
No evacuation orders
In this region of the Bekaa, considered a Hezbollah stronghold, the bodies were buried in a few minutes. Impossible to organize a ceremony: Israeli fighter planes circle in the sky and bomb the area daily. This cluster of villages bordering the Syrian border has been almost completely devastated. Along the road that winds through the plain, farms, agricultural warehouses and houses crushed by bombs parade in the evening light. Even the charred trees did not resist this war in the sky.
“I was sitting in my shop, right in front of my house. Suddenly everything fell apart, says Mohammed, a thick bandage on his head. Amid the ruins of his grocery store blown up by the explosion, this father opens freezers full of chickens and fish. “We are just civilians, I have nothing to hide,” he repeats. Since it began intensifying its bombings on Lebanon a month ago, Israel has claimed to only target Hezbollah fighters, its economic interests and its weapons caches. In this village of Al-Khodr, most of the houses were destroyed, without any evacuation orders being sent to the civilians who were still there.
Mohammed’s wife, seriously injured, is being treated at Rayak hospital a few kilometers away. “80% of victims are women and children, assures director Mohammad Abdallah, we receive several dozen per day. For the moment, we are managing to cope, but we will soon be at the limit of our capacities. “. Faced with the intensification of Israeli strikes, the majority of doctors fled the region with their families.
As in the Gaza Strip, the medical profession is also targeted: at least 163 Lebanese rescuers and caregivers have been killed since the start of the exchange of fire between Hezbollah and the Hebrew State on October 8, 2023. According to the Minister of local health, 36 hospitals were “directly targeted”leading “forced closure” of eight of them. In Rayak, Doctor Abdallah and his colleagues are now only 25 taking turns to care for the wounded, compared to around a hundred before the war.
Traumatized medical teams
“A few days ago, one of our nurses saw her own children arrive in the emergency room. She started screaming, my son, my son! “, continues the director, pushing open a half-open door. In the room, the doctor delicately hugs Narges. Dressed all in black, with a pale face, this mother, devastated by pain, did not say a word. A little boy is sitting on the bed. A long scar runs across the back of his head. His 14-year-old older brother did not survive the strike which targeted a neighboring house. “The whole team is traumatized… We can’t stop crying, confides his colleague Naam, also a nurse. I will never be able to forget the images of this war: the blood, the lifeless bodies, the distress of parents crying for their children. With each new typing, I’m afraid of receiving people I know. »
After this tragedy, she decided to send her children to their grandparents in a village still spared from the bombings. “Our house is right next to here, there are explosions all the time. A bomb fell in front of our house,” she says. Whatever the danger, Naam will not leave his post. “ Patients need us, they are our neighbors, our friends, our community, smiles this 38-year-old Lebanese woman, her features drawn. It is a duty of humanity. »
