Lebanon: ‘Whole neighbourhood wiped out’ in Israel air strike

Since Israel began escalating its air strikes against Hezbollah in September, rockets have hit across the length and breadth of the country. It is a military campaign that Israel’s leaders feel has been brought them huge wins so far – having claimed the lives of Hezbollah’s senior leadership.

However it is also a campaign that has taken many innocent lives, with numerous reports of entire families being killed in strikes around the country.

Over 1,900 Lebanese people have been killed, according to government figures, since Israel stepped up the air strikes. The statistics do not differentiate between Hezbollah fighters and civilians.

Despite issuing no evacuation order to residents in advance on Monday night, the Israeli army subsequently stated that they were aiming for a “Hezbollah terrorist target”, but did not elaborate further.

First reports coming from the scene suggested that the compound of the Rafik Hariri hospital, the capital’s largest public hospital, had been struck, which the Israeli army denied.

The damage to the hospital is superficial, but across a road littered with parked cars that have their windows blown out, lies a poor neighbourhood that was hit.

Fouad’s son, Ahmed joins us. He shows us a picture of his son who lies in intensive care in the hospital, his face bandaged and bloody.

“This was my house; it’s gone now, just like everything else. We have no place to go and no clothes. This is a massacre. We have no base here, no Hezbollah, there’s nothing,” Ahmed tells us.

It is not clear why its army chooses to issue evacuation orders before some missile strikes and not others – but when Israel does strike without warning in a dense residential area, the human cost can be indiscriminate and high.

Fouad tells us of playing with the young children in the neighbourhood who were killed in the strike.

“Whenever I entered the neighbourhood, they would shout, ‘Grandpa, Grandpa! What did you bring us?’ I would give them candies, crisps, and popcorn. Their loss fills me with sorrow; they all died. Their mother is still trapped under the rubble with one of her children.”

As we begin to leave the site, a hush falls over those gathered and we see a stretcher carrying a wrapped body being taken away by the digger.

We are told that a mother was found next to a child.