“Let me see her, let me see her,” the woman cried as her four cousins were gently cradled out of the ambulance this morning. One white shroud bore the remains of two of their shattered bodies.
A day earlier — before the Israeli airstrike that killed them — Zaynab, 13, Zahraa, 12, Malika, 9, and Yasmina, 6, had played together in their grandparents’ courtyard.
Now, in the cemetery of the village of Irkay, in Lebanon’s south, the children lie side by side with their grandparents, uncles and cousin.
“Keep a good image of them in your head,” male relatives pleaded as they pulled their cousin back from the ambulance.
Their mother Suzanne Taqi climbed down into the graves, embracing them one last time.
Nine people from the family were killed in this single strike that came without warning from the sky.
On Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces ordered the whole of Lebanon to be evacuated to just south of this village.
The IDF has not provided information on the target of the strike.
“Everyone here knows what my girls meant to me,” the children’s father, Mohammed Rida Taqi, told CNN, one side of his face covered in bandages and angry red wounds from the blast.
Taqi said his daughter Yasmina had asked him for a necklace made of the words “daddy’s soul” instead of her own name.
After burying his children, he had one thing on his mind: searching through the rubble to find the necklace.
