People standing on a side road are seen through the smashed windshield of a school bus that was damaged while passing a car of a Hezbollah fighter as it was targeted by an Israeli drone strike on a road leading to the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh on May 23, 2024. (Credit: Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP)
Thursday morning, in the southern Lebanese district of Nabatieh, two schools were in a state of shock and mourning, following an Israeli drone strike on a road linking Kfar Dejjal to Shoukine. The first school, the Hassan Kamel al-Sabbah High School in Nabatieh, lost one of its teachers in the bombing, a physics teacher who was also a member of Hezbollah. Students from another school, the Lycee de Shoukine public school, found themselves unwillingly in the front row of this bombardment. The minivan taking them to school was driving on the road targeted by the strike. Several of them suffered minor injuries in the strike.
Over the phone, a high school official told us that two pupils in the fifth and eighth grades had been slightly hit by shards of glass. “They were admitted to the government hospital in Nabatieh, but the supervisor who accompanied them told me that they should be back at the Lycee soon.” According to an image provided by L'Orient-Le Jour's South Lebanon correspondent, the windows of the mini-bus shattered. “The students must have been traumatized, but I haven't seen them yet,” explained the supervisor.
'Panic attacks'
The state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported that a dozen children on board the vehicle were “traumatized” and in a state of panic. The minivan's driver told the NNA that he was fortunately able to “keep control” of the vehicle. “Three of the children on board were bleeding, while the others were screaming and suffering panic attacks,” says Ahmad Sbeyti. “I immediately called ambulances and contacted the students' families to reassure them,” he continued.
The Lycee de Shoukine issued a statement in the morning in which it “condemns this savage attack by the Israeli enemy against civilians, employees, parents, teachers and pupils,” adding that the injured pupils “are back at school.”
In Nabatieh, the Hassan Kamel al-Sabbah High School lost one of its teachers. Mohammad Ali Farran, who was in the targeted car and was killed instantly in the strike, was a contract physics teacher. He was also a member of Hezbollah, as the party confirmed in a statement. A source in the party told L'Orient-Le Jour that the victim belonged to a party force comprising civilians who, in the event of war, are responsible for defending their villages.
The aunt of 11-year-old Lebanese school boy Mohammad Ali Nasser (L) shows his shirt covered with blood at the General Hospital in Nabatieh, following his injury during an Israeli drone strike on the car of a Hezbollah fighter which wounded three children riding a bus to school at the time on the road in southern Lebanon, on May 23, 2024. (Credit: Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP)
The principal of the official Hassan Kamel al-Sabbah High School, Abbas Shoufani, still can not get over the death of the thirty-year-old. “He had an exam proctoring rotation this morning, we were waiting for him at the school,” he told L'Orient-Le Jour. The school learned of his death via social networks, especially as his distraught relatives were calling to make sure he had arrived at his place of work. The students, who were in the exam period, had not yet been notified of the news, according to the principal.
'A new assault on childhood'
Farran, who had been teaching for seven years according to his employer, was “polite and creative, he had never made a fuss at school,” said Shoufani. “We had no idea of his personal life or other commitments,” the principal added. A minute's silence was observed at the school in memory of the teacher.
The Elementary Teachers' Union issued a statement paying tribute to the victim, denouncing a “catastrophe” suffered by the education sector and “a new assault on humanitarian law and childhood.”
In the early afternoon, students from a public school in Saida demonstrated outside their school “in solidarity” with the young people injured in this morning's strike, reported L'Orient-Le Jour's correspondent. A placard held by one of the students waving Lebanese flags read “Our South is bleeding.”
A Hezbollah official?
According to the Israeli army, Farran was “in charge of the infrastructure for the production of combat weapons” within Hezbollah. According to a tweet by the Israeli army's Arabic-language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, the victim helped “produce strategic and unique weapons on behalf of Hezbollah,” adding that “some of the infrastructures for which he was responsible have been attacked in recent months in southern Lebanon.”
The current conflict between Hezbollah and Israel began on Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Hamas launched its al-Aqsa Flood operation against Israel. To date, 313 Hezbollah members have been killed by Israel, in Syria and Lebanon. According to a balance sheet published on Wednesday by the Lebanese Ministry of Health and covering the period from Oct. 8, 2023 to May 21, 2024, the war has claimed no fewer than 1,471 victims (killed and wounded), including 363 fatalities. This figure includes both combatants and civilians.
This article originally appeared in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.