In his living room with a wall pierced by a shrapnel, Moussa Zahrane deplores the fate of his neighbors, who fled the bombs in southern Lebanon only to be killed in an Israeli strike near Beirut.
“They fled from death, but it caught up with them here,” said the 54-year-old man, his feet partly burned by the strike.
His wife and son, injured by the strike Tuesday evening, are still in hospital.
The furniture in his living room was scattered by the blast of the explosion, which damaged a residential building on the outskirts of the peaceful town of Barja, about 30 kilometers south of Beirut.
The strike hit the first floor of the building where families who had fled southern Lebanon lived, where Israel, in open war against pro-Iranian Hezbollah, has intensified its air raids since the end of September.
Twenty people were killed, according to a provisional report from the Lebanese Ministry of Health.
But a local Civil Defense official on site told AFP that rescuers had already removed 30 bodies from the rubble, most of them women and children.
Hezbollah targeted
According to a Lebanese security source, the strike targeted a Hezbollah official, from the same village as one of the families of the displaced.
On Wednesday, rescuers were clearing the rubble of the building, built on a hill overlooking the sea, in search of possible survivors.
“We found bodies of children on the stairs […] and body parts everywhere,” one of them said.
One of the rescuers gathers school bags full of textbooks, including one pink, while another throws away clothes.
A few steps away, a crane is trying to clear the rubble that has blocked the first floor, where a gaping hole reveals the living room of one of the apartments.
According to Hassan Saad, mayor of Barja, a Sunni locality located in the Chouf region, outside the strongholds of Shiite Hezbollah traditionally targeted by Israeli strikes, three displaced families lived in the targeted apartment.
Moussa Zahrane, whose building adjoins the affected building, says that most of the residents were “families” who fled the south about six weeks ago.
“I gave them chairs, mattresses,” he adds. “They are all dead. I’m so sad. »
Moussa Zahrane thanks heaven for sparing his only son, born after years of waiting. “I was going to go to sleep, and while I was kissing my son, everything exploded around me,” he said.
“The flames reached the soles of my feet […]. My son and my wife were injured,” he adds.
Sow fear and divide
This is not the first time that a residential apartment has been targeted in Barja. On October 12, four people were killed and 18 others injured in a similar Israeli raid.
The crisis unit of the municipality of Barja then urged “any person targeted or in danger to move away from the locality”, calling on the authorities to “calm the situation, protect innocent civilians and ease tensions that the Israeli enemy seeks to stir up”.
On Wednesday, the mayor reiterated this call to “not endanger our residents and our guests”, the city welcoming “more than 27,000 displaced people” who fled Israeli bombings.
Before this massive influx of displaced people, Barja had 35,000 inhabitants, plus around 10,000 Syrian refugees.
Israel occasionally carries out deadly strikes outside Hezbollah strongholds, claiming to target the Lebanese movement and often hitting buildings housing displaced people.
In October, 23 displaced people were killed in a strike on a building where they had taken refuge in a Christian town in the north of the country.
A few meters from the targeted building, Mahmoud, 54, sits with his family in front of their house, whose windows have been broken.
This retired soldier, who fled with his family from the village of Yarine, bordering Israel, confided to AFP: “There is no military presence here, we should have felt safe, but suddenly everything changed “.
“This is what Israel is: it wants to sow fear and divide. “You are not safe anywhere.”
