The air strikes put Khalil Moussawi on high alert before the helicopters arrived and the Israeli soldiers blasted the main square. He was at home on his lounge when the first strike came, and he sat quietly listening as about 40 others hit his town into the night. Then he heard the helicopters, and a neighbour told him enemy troops were in their streets.
Over the next few hours, Moussawi was caught in a firefight that left dozens dead and wounded from a secretive Israel Defence Forces (IDF) operation in Nabi Chit, a town in eastern Lebanon that is a stronghold for Hezbollah fighters locked in conflict with Israel. Moussawi, one of the older men of the town, prayed in his apartment when black smoke spread through his building and explosions shook the square.
“The soldiers threw smoke bombs and blinded our view so that you couldn’t see your own finger,” he says. “The drones were hovering over the people and shooting at them. It was carnage.”
The incursion heightened the violence of this regional conflict by sending Israeli forces into Lebanese streets, going beyond the aerial strikes seen in many parts of the country over the past two weeks. It was also pointless. The IDF came searching for the body of one of their own: flight navigator Ron Arad, who was shot down over Lebanon almost 40 years ago and held hostage by a Shia Muslim movement. All they found was empty earth. They retreated without achieving their stated goal, leaving devastation in their wake.
The central square in Nabi Chit is now a crater of brown earth, black bitumen and grey concrete. A bombed car sits on the edge of the crater, and a broken water pipe sends water cascading into a gully about four metres below where the pavement used to be. The explosions were so great that they sent debris flying onto the roofs of the nearby apartment blocks.
We visit Nabi Chit one week after the raid, which took place on March 6. What we discover through witness interviews and visits to key battle sites is a community ready for a long war. On one level, what happened in Nabi Chit demonstrates the military power of Israel. On another, it shows the stubborn resistance of Hezbollah.
Khalil, speaking in an apartment that is partially destroyed, says the Israeli soldiers left defeated. “No matter what they do, we will not deviate from the resistance,” he says. “We rely on Allah, and victory comes from Him.” As he speaks, workers are clearing the top of his building. They shovel earth from the roof and drop it to the town square, where excavators remove the rubble. A Hezbollah flag now flies over one of the bombed cars.
Nabi Chit is an ancient town in the Bekaa Valley, east of Beirut and within five kilometres of the Syrian border. Some families, including the Moussawis, can trace their lineage back at least 700 years. It is the birthplace of Abbas al-Musawi, a founder of Hezbollah and the group’s second secretary-general until he was killed by an Israeli airstrike in 1992. The support for Hezbollah is strong in this district: rockets fired from the surrounding hills slam into northern Israel, sending civilians into air raid shelters.
While the conflict with Israel has lasted for decades, it intensified after the attacks on Iran on February 28. Hezbollah, loyal to the Iranian regime, fired on Israel on March 2. Israel, seeking security for its people, launched attacks on Lebanon in the hope of bringing Hezbollah to its knees.
The aerial attack on Nabi Chit came as no surprise on March 6. Locals say Israeli forces issued a warning to evacuate the town before launching the first strikes at about 2pm, steadily increasing the bombardment until about 11pm. Many people refused to leave their homes and remained near the central square, close to the Al-Nabi Shayth mosque – said to be the final resting place of Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve.
“My neighbour told me, your building is going to be hit by a rocket,” says Mohammad Moussawi, talking to us in front of a destroyed shop. Moussawi, who is another member of the large extended family in this town, worked for several years in tourism in Beirut before returning home. On the day of the attack, he heard the warnings from his neighbour and pleaded with his son, Ali, to leave their home for somewhere safer. Ali insisted on staying. So did Ali’s cousin, Hassan.
Ali and Hassan were watching from a doorway when an explosion threw them across the square and buried them under the earth. “For two hours – no, three hours – they were under the ground,” Mohammad says. They could barely breathe, he says, but they dug their way through sand and mud. Two others died near them, but the two young men survived and were taken to hospital.
“We trust God,” says Mohammad, speaking in English. “But let our enemies go back to their countries. They are not strong like us.”
The events of that night remain unclear and contested. The Lebanese Health Ministry says at least 41 people were killed and 40 wounded. Israeli authorities confirmed the raid and told The Times of Israel there were no Israeli casualties. The operation is said to have involved four helicopters, including two that landed with troops, but there has not been any explanation from the IDF about how the attack unfolded. Nobody has claimed any strategic outcome from the mission.
Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, acknowledged the purpose was to recover the body of Arad, and he admitted it did not succeed.
“The operation carried out last night did not yield the findings we were looking for,” he posted on social media. “But the commitment of the State of Israel and my commitment to completing all missions concerning our prisoners and missing persons is absolute and permanent. So it was, and so it will be.”
Arad was lost in October 1986, but the search for Israeli captives does not end. It is now shaped by the experience of the 251 hostages seized by Hamas in the attacks on October 7, 2023, and the outpouring of emotion over their fate. One of those hostages, Eli Sharabi, was held for 491 days, almost all of that time in tunnels. In his memoir, he tells of being kicked and beaten on the ground while also being starved of food, and thinking: “Are there no limits to your malice?”
Israel showed in Gaza that it would do whatever it thought necessary to recover living hostages or their remains, and it took the same approach in Nabi Chit on March 6. Even so, its mission drew a rebuke from Arad’s widow, Tami Arad.
“We have stated as a family on more than one occasion that we oppose actions that would endanger soldiers,” she said in a statement. “We value the commitment of the State of Israel, yet we request in every way possible, ‘do not carry out operations that have even minimal risk to the troops’.”
For some, the IDF operation in Nabi Chit might rank as an assault on a terrorist cell. Australia lists Hezbollah as a terrorist group, as do the United States, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom. This matches the treatment of Hamas, which was also founded on Shia Islam and funded by Iran. The stated aim of Hezbollah leaders is to bring death to Israel.
To people in Nabi Chit, however, Hezbollah is a resistance movement. They say the local community rushed to defend the town as soon as they learned of the foreign soldiers. When we visit, we see banners in the streets with photographs of the Hezbollah supporters who died in the firefight. They are remembered as martyrs.
The head of the municipality, Hani Moussawi, walks with us along a street towards the cemetery where Israeli troops searched for Ron Arad’s remains. The IDF posed as members of the Lebanese army and as ambulance officers, he says, but local authorities detected the helicopters and knew an attack was under way.
“On their way, they met three Syrian guys in the previous village,” he says of the IDF. “They shot them, so as not to give word about what they were doing.” When they reached the town, he tells us, they made their way to the burial ground at about midnight. Some began digging, while others guarded the perimeter.
The gunfire began when local fighters realised they had intruders in their town. On a hill above the cemetery, we see the damage from drone attacks or airstrikes: rubble everywhere, a small red sedan covered in concrete, and a minibus that’s been blown up. Hani Moussawi says the IDF entered the cemetery from the rear and called in support from the air as soon as they encountered local resistance.
The fighting continued as the IDF began to withdraw, creating mayhem around the town, he says. The main entrance to the cemetery shows the signs of the gunfight in the street: there are a dozen bullet holes in the shutters of the fashion boutique, La Violetta. At the same time, the IDF sent a missile into the town square.
“When they opened fire, the Israelis tried to cover for their withdrawal,” Hani Moussawi says. “A massacre occurred in a house where nine died – martyred. They meant, by opening fire everywhere, just to help themselves leave.”
This was a confused and chaotic battle. Many of the details remain unclear, and the Israeli version of events is hidden from public view. But the destruction is immense when we visit the town one week after the raid.
The war in Lebanon has already cost 1001 lives since March 2, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Another 2584 people have been wounded. There are casualties on the Israeli side of the border, as well, but not on the same scale.
Fifteen civilians have been killed in Israel, according to a Reuters report citing Israel’s ambulance service, and two IDF soldiers have been killed in southern Lebanon.
If the war continues to escalate, perhaps with a ground invasion from Israel, the clash in Nabi Chit could be repeated in countless towns across Lebanon. The Shia Muslims of these towns appear ready to support Hezbollah against Israel, even if they are outnumbered and even if the Christians of Lebanon do not join them. The war is already under way; whether it becomes a civil war is yet to be determined.
“The Israelis are brutal and savage – not us,” says Hani Moussawi, confident his god supports his cause. “As long as there is Israel, there will be resistance. Not only here, but anywhere.”
He shows us the corner of the graveyard where he says the soldiers searched in the earth. He is incredulous at what they did. “It’s an empty hole! Where they dug, there’s nothing,” he says. “Ron Arad is not here.”
We are standing in the cemetery when we hear the jet. We cannot see it, but we hear the airstrike – an explosion that thunders across the town and startles a woman and her daughter as they tend to one of the graves. They rush from the graveyard. We learn later that the missile hit homes on the edge of Nabi Chit, without casualties.
Then we hear two small retorts in the distance. Hezbollah has fired more rockets into Israel. With every attack, there is a counterattack. The war goes on.
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.
