A Belgian war journalist visited the site of the attack on the leader of Lebanese Hezbollah, in the southern suburbs of Beirut. He was the first journalist to go there. By his own admission, he has never experienced this in his career, total destruction and a population in dire straits.
This is undoubtedly one of the places where foreign journalists have been kept away for years: the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, a real stronghold of Hezbollah. And yet, on Saturday morning, a Belgian journalist managed to reach the bombed site, where the leader of the terrorist movement Hassan Nasrallah was killed. He arrived on site well before the other foreign reporters from CNN or the BBC.
“They were screaming, screaming, in full mourning, just an hour after the announcement of Nasrallah’s death. And that’s how we entered places where normally, no one and especially not foreigners, foreign presses, could enter“, he describes.
In recent days, the search for victims began with paltry resources given the extent of the damage. More than 80 tons of bombs were used just to carry out this extraordinary attack. “I have seen a lot of destruction all over the world, in Ukraine, in Gaza, in many countries, in war situations. But the very place there, I had never seen such destruction in a fairly limited place“, confides the journalist.
Today, Israel’s ground attack in the south of the country is causing the exodus of thousands of Lebanese who are fleeing the conflict zone. “If you look around here, in the center of Beirut, there are lots of people, there are traffic jams everywhere. Apparently, what I’m being told is because there are more and more people who have left the south of the country“, he explains.
The Belgian journalist will stay on site for several more days to bear witness to a war situation that, he admits, he has never experienced before.
lebanon Hezbollah Israel nasrallah
