{"id":475300,"date":"2026-03-14T13:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T13:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/475300\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T13:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T13:40:08","slug":"entire-families-wiped-out-and-towns-emptied-as-israels-war-on-lebanon-intensifies-lebanon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/475300\/","title":{"rendered":"Entire families wiped out and towns emptied as Israel\u2019s war on Lebanon intensifies | Lebanon"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Batoul Hamdan and her two children, seven-month-old Fatima and Jihad, three, Monday\u2019s iftar, the evening meal that breaks the daily fast during Ramadan, was special.<\/p>\n

For a week, they had eaten to the sounds of bombs in their home in Arab Salim. Hamdan eventually decided to leave for Al-Nimiriya, the sleepy town where she had grown up. Surrounded by her parents and siblings in the family home, she hoped they could finally enjoy the festive mood of Ramadan.<\/p>\n

They had just finished their meal when the bomb fell. The Israeli airstrike collapsed the two-storey building instantly, killing all eight members of the Hamdan family: grandparents Ahmad and Najib, their children, including Batoul, and grandchildren Fatima and Jihad \u2013 three generations wiped out in a moment.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, only snarled rebar and broken concrete remained of the Hamdan family home. The fragments of their lives \u2013 a certificate of achievement from the children\u2019s schooldays, cutlery from their cabinet, frayed purses \u2013 had been ejected by the force of the blast and now littered the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no warning before the strike. My own two kids started to cry, I picked them up and started to run away from the explosion when it happened,\u201d said Qassem Ayoub, a neighbour and town police officer, as he stared at the wreckage. \u201cWhy were they targeted? I don\u2019t know, ask the Israelis.\u201d<\/p>\n

The aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in Nabi Chit. Photograph: Mohammad Yassine\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Batoul and her loved ones were among the 773 Lebanese people \u2013 including more than 100 children \u2013 killed by Israel\u2019s campaign in Lebanon<\/a> since 2 March. They join a growing list of families completely wiped out by Israeli bombings, in a conflict whose death toll is rising faster than in any previous war in Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Forty-one people were killed by Israeli airstrikes in Nabi Chit in the Bekaa valley in only five hours last Saturday, and 18 people died in a single night in the town of Sir el-Gharbiyeh on 8 March. The pace of death has stunned Lebanese people and left them struggling to keep up.<\/p>\n

Relative to population, the death toll in Lebanon is equivalent to more than 9,236 people being killed in the UK in 11 days, or about 45,600 if compared with the US.<\/p>\n

The war began when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel on 2 March, prompting Israel to launch a campaign across Lebanon. The conflict is escalating sharply and has already pushed beyond the parameters of the 13-month Israel-Hezbollah war of 2023-24. Israel has displaced about 1 million people from wide swathes of the country and has bombed deep inside the capital city, Beirut.<\/p>\n

The strike on Al-Nimiriya pushed out almost all of the town\u2019s residents. Those remaining include Ayoub, the mayor and his deputies, and ambulance workers who sit on plastic chairs until the sound of airstrikes sends them running to their cars.<\/p>\n

Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike in the Nabatieh region. Photograph: EPA<\/p>\n

In Nabatieh, a short drive away, Israeli bombing has turned the community of about 90,000 people into a ghost town. The buzz of a low-flying drone echoed eerily through the empty streets and the crunch of broken glass underfoot sounded unnaturally loud.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s probably only about 150 families left here, the rest have left,\u201d said Ali Hariri, a lawyer who also works as a first responder and is deputy head of the Beit al-Talaba aid organisation. He drove through the town with fellow first responder Abbas Fahad in a battered red ambulance, checking on people who stayed behind.<\/p>\n

Hariri rattled off casualty counts as he passed strike sites. A collapsed four-storey apartment building left four people dead, he said as he looked over the crater where the structure once stood. At another strike site, Fahad picked up a photo album lying on the ground. \u201cI took these wedding photos! These are Ahmad\u2019s,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

An ambulance amid the rubble of destroyed buildings in Nabatieh. Photograph: Mouhammad Al-Zanaty\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Hariri said: \u201cWe\u2019re worried about tanks coming in of course. They\u2019re talking about invasion. Maybe the Israelis will come all the way to Nabatieh, who knows? I mean, they came to Beirut in 1982.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hariri escaped injury the other day after the building directly behind the aid centre was levelled by an Israeli bomb, damaging medical facilities. \u201cWe won\u2019t leave though \u2013 our organisation is meant to help people, so we have to stay,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He looked up as the rumble of a war plane filled the air. \u201cYou should leave now, the drone is gone and the jets are coming. That means they found a target to hit,\u201d he said, jumping in the ambulance.<\/p>\n

An hour later, Israel issued a displacement order for a wide swathe of south Lebanon, including Nabatieh. People living up to 25 miles from the border with Israel had to move northwards, the Israeli military said, before strikes it would conduct on Hezbollah targets. Hezbollah had fired its largest volley of rockets yet into Israel on Wednesday night, injuring two people<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The order, analysts said, was issued to help Israel fight Hezbollah, which it has been clashing with on the ground in south Lebanon over the past week. It has steadily carved off the south from the rest of the country, bombing and collapsing a bridge over the Litani River on Friday.<\/p>\n

Human rights groups said the order was illegal and amounted to forced displacement. Nevertheless, the thousands of cars that soon clogged the highways leading northwards showed people had taken it seriously.<\/p>\n

Riyadh al-Lattah, 57, a woodworker and father of five, complied with Israel\u2019s displacement order and left his home in Beirut\u2019s southern suburbs last week, leaving his windows and doors open so they would not shatter from the force of nearby bombings.<\/p>\n

Al-Lattah was surprised, then, when the sidewalk 15 metres (49ft) in front of him exploded in the early hours of Thursday morning. He screamed at his children to stay in the tent, watching as a man writhed and reached for his legs, which were lying some distance away on the sidewalk. A second Israeli drone strike moments later killed the man and 11 others.<\/p>\n

People inspect the damage after a drone strike in Ramlet al-Baida, Beirut. Photograph: Claudia Greco\/Reuters<\/p>\n

\u201cThis war is harder, because at least last time they\u2019d tell you before they hit. Now it\u2019s just random,\u201d said Al-Lattah, sitting smoking argileh next to his tent facing the corniche in the central Beirut neighbourhood of Ramlet al-Baida, where the sand by the seaside walkway was still stained red with blood. \u201cBut I guess I\u2019ll stay here, my house is still under evacuation order.\u201d<\/p>\n

Batoul Hamdan had not wanted to sleep on the street, Ali Farhat, the mayor of Al-Nimiriya, said. He showed the Guardian a screenshot of texts she had sent to her friend before her death.<\/p>\n

\u201cI called many numbers but there is no place to go, I don\u2019t want to be on the streets,\u201d one text read. \u201cI\u2019d rather stay and die in my house.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Batoul Hamdan and her two children, seven-month-old Fatima and Jihad, three, Monday\u2019s iftar, the evening meal that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-475300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}