‘There is nothing, no one left’: Inside Lebanon’s destroyed south where Israel threatens ground invasion
Against the intermittent thump of distant Israeli airstrikes, the elderly couple sit on the floor of a brightly coloured classroom, sobbing.
Today they have fled their village in southern Lebanon under bombing, to this absurdly purple room covered in children’s scrawls. Neither of them can walk. They carry only a few bags between them.
Early this morning their youngest son, Mohamed, 38, a father of three and their carer, had been shredded in an Israeli airstrike on his car between Lebanon’s southern city of Tyre, where we are sitting, and their village.
The part time electrician had been shuttling between his wife and three children, who were staying in a displacement camp in the coastal city, and his elderly parents, who, too old and infirm to move, were sheltering in their village of Chaatiyeh. Both are in Israel’s evacuation zone.
By chance, Mohamed’s own nephew had been the ambulance driver on call in the area when Mohamed was killed. He found his uncle, his limbs severed, his car a charred wreck.
“Mohamed was looking after us, caring for us. Today the light went out of my life,” Iman, 78, the mother says, her voice a cracked shell.
Unable to continue speaking, her husband Daoud, 85, picks up the story.
“When they came and told me my son was killed, I collapsed. Totally collapsed.
“He has left three children with no father. My heart is burning. I feel like part of me died.”
Sitting perched on a child’s chair in this room, their new home for now, Fouad, 54, their eldest son, explains that his own child had been killed in the last war with Israel in 2024 while volunteering with the civil defence. This is the second time the family has been displaced to this school where we all sit now.
“What, after all this, is left for us from life? There is no one, nothing left,” he says, his face in his hands.
For nearly two weeks Israel has been pounding swathes of Lebanon, and in the south here pushing deeper into the war ravaged country, as it is locked in a fierce battle with the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
This war was triggered 12 days ago when Hezbollah fired at Israel in retaliation for massive US and Israeli strikes over Iran killing its supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
The conflict shows no signs of abating. Even as US President Donald Trump tries to suggest his offensive may be drawing to a close, there are fears the battle between Israel and Lebanon has only just begun.
