Three of the four victims, Wassila Beydoun and children Hassan and Amira Fadlallah, in photos circulating on social networks. (Credit: X account of Ahmad Hariri)
The Israeli strike on Tuesday night targeted a senior Hezbollah official, Fouad Shukur, in an apartment building in Haret Hreik, a southern suburb of Beirut.
The attack resulted in at least five civilian casualties among the building’s residents and over 70 injuries in the surrounding area.
Hezbollah has neither confirmed nor denied Shukur’s death, saying only in a Wednesday morning statement that he was present in the building at the time of the strike. According to the Israeli military, Shukur was killed.
Here is what we know about the civilian victims of this strike:
Two of the victims are siblings. Amira Fadlallah, 6, and Hassan Fadlallah, 10, were found in the rubble of their apartment in the targeted building. Their photos quickly spread across social media, causing widespread emotion in the country. According to L’Orient-Le Jour’s correspondent in the south, Mountasser Abdallah, they are the grandchildren of cleric Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah.
In an interview with L’Orient-Le Jour, Riyad Fadlallah, head of the municipal council of Ainata, the family’s village in southern Lebanon, said that the children’s older brother was burned in the strike and is hospitalized at Geitaoui Hospital. The father was also injured, while the mother was unharmed as she was outside the home at the time of the strike.
“The two children were found embracing under the rubble. It is unimaginably sad. They must have been very scared before they were buried,” said Riyad Fadlallah. The village of Ainata is in mourning, he added. The funerals will take place Wednesday afternoon in Ghobeiri, on the outskirts of Beirut.
Another victim, a woman, was also pulled from the rubble of the affected building and transported to the nearby Bahnam Hospital, like the two children. She was identified as Wassila Beydoun, 45, originally from the village of Chehabiyeh in southern Lebanon and residing in Beirut’s southern suburbs. According to information gathered by Mountasser Abdallah from the victim’s relatives, she was divorced from a sheikh and the mother of four daughters, the youngest of whom is still in university. Beydoun lived alone in her apartment, and her daughters reside with their father.
The fourth victim was Hana Hakim. She arrived at Sahel Hospital, also in Beirut’s southern suburbs, with a severe head injury and was declared dead shortly after, according to L’Orient-Le Jour’s journalist on the scene, Lyana Alameddine. Relatives explained that she was praying at the time of the strike and described her as “a kind-hearted person.” Hakim was the mother of three daughters, one of whom is in the United States. One of her daughters, in her fifties, is a divorced pharmacist with two children and lived with her. There is no information yet on what happened to her, according to relatives interviewed.
Salwa Bitar, a retired pharmacist in her 50s and daughter of Hakim, succumbed to her injuries on July 31, according to a relative at the Sahel Hospital. She was divorced with two children, a son and daughter, in their 20s.
This article was originally published in L'Orient-Le Jour and translated by Sahar Ghoussoub.