At noon Tuesday, relatives gathered in a cemetery in this southern Lebanese city to bury some of those killed in an Israeli airstrike on the nearby village of Ain Al-Deleb.
Though the strike — which destroyed two apartment buildings — happened Sunday, rescue crews didn’t finish getting all the bodies out until Tuesday. The death toll was at 45, but likely to rise, authorities said.
As the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah exploded further Tuesday, Lebanese people scrambled to stay out of the violence. In recent days, more than 1,000 have been killed nationwide and nearly 1 million displaced.
Israel, which began a ground invasion Tuesday, has launched hundreds of airstrikes and warned residents in numerous cites to evacuate immediately because more were on the way.
Inside the cemetery prayer hall in Sidon, family members gathered around 12 open caskets. One of the women, her eyes puffy from long hours of crying, sat by a casket labeled “Deniz Al-Baba” and put her head on the body bag. With her hand, she reached out to the casket with the body of Ali Al-Rawaas, Baba’s son.
Sitting on a nearby chair with crutches at his side was 62-year-old Abdul Hamid Ramadan. He had been injured in Sunday’s strike, which also killed his daughter, 28-year-old Julia, and his wife Jinan Al-Baba.
“Israel came and changed the course of my life all at once. My wife, my daughter, the house I paid for over the last 20 years,” he said.
His anger building, he blamed America, excoriating its leaders for “saying they want a cease-fire then sending Israel 1 million — a million! — tons of ammunition.”
“I worked hard all this time, to say I sacrificed myself for my family, and no one else,” he said. “And now my wife, my life partner, is gone. And Julia, the smile of our house, is gone.”