‘Destroyed my whole life’: Lebanese families wiped out in Israeli attacks

Amnesty urges war crimes probe into deadly Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon

Tyre, Lebanon – Hussein Saleh’s story is heard again and again in southern Lebanon. In March, he lost his family in an Israeli air strike.

Hussein stands at the site of the attack in Tyre’s al-Thakana neighbourhood, where his home once stood. He pointed to the spot he was sitting in with his family before he went to buy groceries on March 6, only to find nothing left when he returned.

“I wasn’t far away when I heard the explosions,” Hussein says, with tears in his eyes. “I rushed back … there was smoke everywhere, but I couldn’t find anyone. I couldn’t find my daughter … I was screaming out for my wife, my father-in-law, his wife.”

He later describes finding the severed head of five-year-old Sara, his only child.

Nine people were in the house at the time of the attack – three of them were children, and his wife was pregnant.

“There wasn’t one body that was intact,” Hussein says, as he explains that it took three days to collect all the body parts.

“What was their crime?” Hussein asks. “I want to know. Why did the Israeli enemy have to kill them? What did they do to deserve this? They destroyed my whole life.”

The strike that killed Hussein’s family was one of three Israeli attacks investigated by Amnesty International, which cumulatively killed 24 civilians between March 6 and March 13. The dead included 12 children ranging in ages from five to 16, as well as six women.

“Amnesty International came to the conclusion that these three attacks should be investigated as war crimes because the Israeli military failed to take all the necessary precautions to protect civilians and failed to distinguish between military targets and civilian objects,” says Sahar Mandour, a Lebanon researcher for Amnesty International. “There was no apparent target, and there was no specific warning or an effective warning.”

The strikes took place in al-Thakana in Tyre, Arki village in Sidon district, and al-Rahbat neighbourhood in Nabatieh district. Amnesty International says it didn’t find evidence of any military objectives at the time of the attacks.

“Within the space of just a week – the Israeli military obliterated entire families, including a dozen children, in Lebanon, demonstrating a callous disregard for civilian lives. How many more families will have to pull the body parts of their children from the rubble before this devastating cycle of war crimes ends?” Kristine Beckerle, Amnesty’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in its report.

Despite requests, Israel hasn’t provided information regarding the targets of the three attacks.

This is not the first time Israel has been accused of illegal attacks in Lebanon, since the beginning of its attacks on the country in October 2023. Israel has regularly ignored ceasefires and invaded Lebanese territory, continuing to hold large areas in the south.

Since the fighting escalated again in March of this year, Israel has killed at least 4,250 people, including more than 250 children, according to the Lebanese government.

During all of this, critics say that Israel has acted with impunity, and without fear of accountability.

“The persistent impunity for unlawful attacks risks normalising serious violations of international humanitarian law and sends a dangerous message that Israeli forces can continue to unlawfully kill and injure civilians unchecked, without any prospect for justice or reparation,” Beckerle said in the Amnesty report.

Paramedic Moussa Chaalan knows what that means – 135 of his colleagues have been killed since March, many in so-called deliberate double-tap strikes.

Moussa was among the first to arrive at the site after the attack that killed Hussein’s family.

“The body parts were scattered as far as 200 metres [650 feet] away from the impact site. Tens of families have been killed this way. We have seen this across southern Lebanon … in Qana, in Srifa. In Burj Shemali, we collected body parts of 14 people killed in a single strike,” Chaalan explains.

A day before the attack that killed Hussein’s family, on March 5, the Israeli military had issued sweeping mass forced displacement orders telling all residents of southern Lebanon, including residents of Tyre city, to leave – to “ensure [their] safety”.

Hussein says his family were not able to immediately flee because six of his family members were living with a medical condition or suffered from an illness.

Human rights groups say these forced displacement orders are not effective advanced warnings and that Israel must still distinguish between military and civilian targets when conducting attacks, or else they would be considered indiscriminate.

“The enemy is able to carry out precision strikes … yet it chooses to kill women and children. Israel should be tried in court for its crimes,” Hussein says.

His family home is now an empty lot. “We didn’t need bulldozers to remove the rubble because there was nothing left. The structure was flattened,” Moussa, the paramedic, recalls.

Months later, Hussein still looks through the ruins of his house hoping to find a memory – a photo, an album, or a toy. But everything is gone, leaving nothing of his life and the family he loves.