How Israeli rockets emptied a Mediterranean village in Lebanon

[Pelican Press 0]

How ******** rockets emptied a Mediterranean village in Lebanon

34 minutes ago

By Ali Abbas Ahmadi, BBC News

Maria Shaya

Alma al-Shaab and the surrounding countryside in spring 2020, with the Mediterranean Sea visible in the distance

“Why, why us?” cries Milad Eid, his anguish clear over the breaking phone line.

An hour earlier, he was dousing a ***** at a house that had been hit by an ******** missile. While he was there, a ***** struck another one.

His village, Alma al-Shaab, ***** in southern Lebanon just over a kilometre from the ******** border.

Since October last year, it has been caught in cross-border fighting between ******** forces and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia that operates from southern Lebanon.

At least 800 residents have fled, and now there are only about 100 left, officials say.

“Nobody knows why they are attacking our houses,” Mr Eid says. “It’s not our war.”

Getty Images

Plumes of smoke erupt during *******’s bombardment of Alma al-Shaab in April 2024

Lebanon’s Mediterranean coastline is dotted with scenic towns and villages, where bougainvilleas droop over meandering streets.

Alma al-Shaab, its residents say, is the most picturesque of them all.

The only ********** village in the largely Shia-******* south, Alma al-Shaab’s position on a hill offers majestic views of the surrounding countryside, all the way to the sea in the distance.

It is also clearly visible from northern *******.

This closeness to the border has seen it heavily targeted by ******** forces over the past nine months.

Getty Images

The ******** military post of Hanita is around 2km (1.2 miles) from Alma al-Shaab

A day after

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, Hezbollah and its allies fired waves of rockets from Lebanon into a disputed area along the border in an apparent show of support for the armed group.

******* retaliated with drone strikes, and both sides have since drastically escalated the scale and intensity of attacks across the *******-Lebanon border.

By the end of May, Alma al-Shaab had been hit 188 times by ******** forces, according to the

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, a research centre that uses data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (Acled).

The ******** army says it targets Hezbollah fighters and infrastructure and retaliates to attacks on ******** army bases in northern *******.

But some top Lebanese officials have accused it of implementing scorched earth tactics to make the whole area uninhabitable.

The villagers the BBC spoke to were reluctant to discuss whether

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or other armed groups were using Alma al-Shaab to ******* *******. One hinted that locals had unsuccessfully tried to stop fighters from using their land.

No one in Alma al-Shaab has been *******.

But so far, *******’s bombardment has completely destroyed 10 houses, damaged 120 others and hit the town’s main water tank, according to the deputy mayor, William Haddad.

Some 12 sq km (3,000 acres) of agricultural and forest land have been burned, he adds.

William Haddad

A fireman douses the flames caused by an ********** in Alma al-Shaab

Normally, there are 900 people in Alma al-Shaab – and around 1,500 in the summer, when emigrants return to spend time in their ancestral village.

Now there are only around 100 left, Mr Haddad says, and no children. The memory of past conflicts hangs heavily in the air.

People remember

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, the *******-Hezbollah war of 2006, and countless skirmishes.

“Maybe 90% of people of Alma al-Shaab left directly in one day [after 8 October] because they don’t want to experience what they did in 2006,” says Mr Haddad.

Maria Shaya

Maria Shaya in Alma al-Shaab overlooking a nearby valley in August 2020

Maria Shaya, 31, talks of a childhood of attacks and explosions, with a constant ***** of ********* around her home. She left aged 18 to study in Beirut.

“I don’t remember a time where there was no conflict.”

She can recall the sound of ******, drones and fighter jets in detail. But during visits home in recent years, her “brain chooses not to hear it”, she says.

Since last year’s resurgence of fighting, she has not visited her father, who refuses to leave the village.

It is a painful reality, at odds with her pride for the place.

“I love Alma,” she says. “The air there smells different. It’s so green and lush, and you can walk around and pick things to eat off the trees.”

Spending time with her grandparents and cousins under the lemon trees is now a distant recollection.

She, like hundreds of others, do not know when they will be able to return.

“We don’t want to be in a war,” she says. “I just miss going home.”

Maria Shaya

The current conflict is very different to the ones before, Mr Haddad says.

“What happened in 2006 was over in 30 or 33 days,” Mr Haddad says. “Now, we are on maybe seven months and it’s [still going] on. Nobody knows what the limits are.”

Since 7 October, ******* has launched more than 5,300 attacks in Lebanon, according to the Beirut Urban Lab. Hezbollah and allied groups have attacked ******* around 1,200 times, they report.

The ******* Defense Forces said on 6 June that approximately 4,850 missiles had been fired at ******* from Lebanese territory. Earlier in April, it said ******** forces had hit over 4,300 “Hezbollah targets” in Lebanon.

Both sides say they only aim at military targets, but both Lebanese and ******** civilians have been heavily affected by the fighting.

According to UN figures from the end of May, at least 88 civilians have been ******* in Lebanon and more than 93,000 have been uprooted. Across the border, ******** media report that 10 civilians have been ******* while some 60,000 have been displaced.

The ********* is taking a mental, physical and economic toll on the residents of Alma al-Shaab, most of whom have fled to cities like Beirut and Sidon.

Those who have a second home or relatives to stay with are lucky, the deputy mayor says. Others have had to rent houses, often living together with two or three other families.

Many say income has dried up and children are unable to go to school.

Milad Eid

Milad Eid saw two houses bombed just minutes before speaking to the BBC

Some residents insist they will stay, no matter what.

Milad Eid is one of them. “You don’t know when the clouds will shell you or something will ******* you,” he says.

But if he leaves, he is afraid of “facing the same problem as the Palestinians when they left their country”.

Mr Eid is referring to what is known as the

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, by the Palestinians.

On 14 May 1948, ******* declared independence, and in a war which began the next day, up to 750,000 Palestinians who had lived on that land fled or were expelled from their homes.

Neither they nor their descendants have been allowed by ******* to return.

“They became refugees, and still after 70 or 75 years they are crying for their country and their villages and their houses,” he says.

When it comes to the Lebanon-******* border today, most international observers have stopped short of calling the situation an all-out war.

But for those who live there, there is nothing else it can be.

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#******** #rockets #emptied #Mediterranean #village #Lebanon

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