By Noemí Jabois
Barja, Lebanon, Nov 6 (EFE).- Tuesday night Hassan Souleiman couldn’t fall asleep in his apartment in Barja, a predominantly Sunni area just 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of Beirut.
He decided to prepare a “shisha” or hookah, but the first puff was interrupted by a bombing.
Hassan was injured in his arm and leg, yet feels lucky that his family was not in the building, which saved them from the latest massacre perpetrated by Israel in Lebanon that killed at least 30 of his neighbors and left three wounded, according to the latest report from the Lebanese Civil Defense.
“My family left 30 minutes before the attack. They had to go somewhere with my sister’s husband and their children. God protected them,” Hassan told EFE.
Rescue teams are still searching for possible missing people under the rubble of this building and another one nearby, which also had significant damage. Survivors and neighbors gathered in the area, waiting for the excavator operators to bring news, good or bad.
A somber night
“I was trying to sleep but couldn’t, so I made a ‘shisha’ and sat here, by the black door. When I sat down, I heard the missile before it crashed, and then the attack happened,” recalled Hassan, with his arm in a sling under his sweatshirt and a burn on his leg from the explosion.
He had been living on the ground floor of the building for a month after being displaced for the second time in a year of conflict.
Following the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah in October 2023, the family had to leave their home in Ayta ash Shab, near the border with Israel, and move to the southern area of Tyre.
However, since Israel began an intense air offensive against Lebanon a month and a half ago, neither Tyre nor any other town in the south of the country is safe. Around 1.2 million people, like Hassan, have been displaced within the country.
The bombing campaign has focused mainly on the south and east of the country, as well as the southern suburbs of Beirut, which are predominantly Shiite, but attacks on towns outside these areas inhabited by other communities are becoming less sporadic.
These attacks often target buildings housing displaced people from the south of the country, and many accuse Israel of trying to create internal tensions between communities.
Mustafa Damaj, a member of the Lebanese Civil Defense sent to the site of the attack in Barja, explained to EFE that, in fact, “a small percentage of displaced people” lived here.
According to the rescuer, most of the fatalities found by his teams were women and children.
The search continued on Wednesday, while the number of missing persons remained unclear.
“According to the neighbors, there could be people (under the rubble); some say 20, some say 10, some say eight. That’s why we’re being very careful with the rescue operations and debris removal, in case there are people underneath,” the rescuer said.
The excavator is clearing away the remains of the building that collapsed from the impact, as well as those from a controlled partial demolition of another building performed by the authorities to avoid risks during the search.
“Some parts posed a great threat to the rescue operations underneath, so we removed the material with machinery,” Damaj added.
Meanwhile, another neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous, blamed the United States for financing Israel.
“While (Donald) Trump dances for the elections, our children are being killed by American weapons,” he added, shortly after the Republican presidential candidate declared his victory in the US elections. EFE
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