Southern Lebanon bombarded by Israel during the night of Aug. 24-25, 2024. (Credit: Aziz Taher/Reuters)
“It was the hardest night since the beginning of the war,” says Randa, 58, who, along with her husband, has not left Alma al-Shaab in the Sour region of southern Lebanon since the fighting began between Hezbollah and Israel on Oct. 8, following the Gaza war.
Early on Sunday morning, Hezbollah announced the “first phase” of its response to the assassination of its military chief Fouad Shukur in southern Beirut in late July. However, that night, the Israeli army conducted a series of preventive raids, resulting in at least two deaths and two injuries, to “counter” the party’s attacks.
At 4 a.m., Randa, her husband, and their daughter, who had returned to Alma al-Shaab during the school holidays to be with her parents, woke up to the “sound of planes.” “Then it was bombing after bombing. We heard it from both sides. There was an airstrike nearby,” she recounts. “Usually, missiles fall one after another, but this time there were two at the same time.”
The Israeli artillery “bathed the entire area in red,” causing fires that “set all the fields” around the village ablaze, according to the woman in her fifties. “It was the most stressful night we’ve experienced,” she continues.
But the couple does not plan to leave the village: “We have nowhere to go. Either we die here, or we stay.”
“I feared falling asleep”
Racha, who lives on the road to Naqoura in the same region as Randa, with her mother, was also jolted awake at 4 a.m. by “terrifying noises.” A friend called her from Alma al-Shaab and told her what was happening there. “Then, I looked on social media and saw it was everywhere...” she says. “The noise alone was frightening... Since the start of the war, I’ve never been so scared,” she adds, saying she couldn’t sleep all night.
“I feared falling asleep and having a rocket hit us.” She continues: “It’s not like in 2006; Israel is more advanced, its army can obliterate the South in a second, and there’s nothing we can do... I don’t understand how people still believe in Hassan Nasrallah...” By around 7 a.m., the calm returned. But Racha remained on edge. “I had planned to go out with friends, but I decided to stay home, waiting for Hassan Nasrallah’s speech.”
Mohammad Kassem Tohme, the mayor of Kounine, one of the villages heavily hit during the night, also described the strikes as “more intense than on other days” and “deafening.” However, he puts things into perspective. “It was indeed a tough night, but we’re used to it,” he tells L'Orient Today. For him, these intense strikes won’t drive people away. “Some watched the firing from their balconies, and the village square was packed with people.”
Amal Wahab, a resident of the Jabal Rihane region in the Jezzine district further north, also described “a night of horror.” “We’re still trembling,” she tells our correspondent in the South. “The sounds of explosions were terrifying and continuous, the whole house was shaking, the Israeli planes were flying very low over our regions as if they were about to touch the roofs of our buildings,” Amal recounts. She also mentions the panic among the children, “whose screams mixed with the explosions.”
“We’ve never seen anything like this before, I’m panicked and don’t know what to do,” she says.
Return to “normal” artillery fire
In Bint Jbeil, Mohammad Assaily explains that the explosions’ sounds “resounded everywhere” around them, without knowing where they were coming from. “Windows were shattered,” he reports, adding that since the morning, “things have returned to normal, with the usual artillery fire.”
From 4 a.m. to 7 a.m., Zeinab and her family, displaced from Kfar Kila (Marjayoun district) to Jibchit (Nabatieh district), spent the night outside: the doors and windows of their apartment were shaking. “I was afraid it would explode on us... My daughter said she was afraid the house would collapse on us, so we stayed by our car,” says the mother of four. “The whole neighborhood was worried, everyone came out.” “I fear the war will spread, and we have nowhere to go...” the caregiver adds.
This article originally appeared in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.
