A man moves debris from the roof of an adjacent apartment block hit in an Israeli airstrike in Sidon, Lebanon on March 14.Siegfried Modola/The Globe and Mail
Simple wooden coffins filled a mosque in Sidon, the coastal Lebanese city about halfway between Beirut and the Israeli border, at noon Saturday for the funerals of 11 Palestinians killed in an Israeli air strike.
A single missile hit their four-storey apartment building not far from the mosque at 8:40 a.m. Friday, destroying the two upper floors and shattering the windows of the homes around it.
“Israel usually gives a few minutes warning before an attack, but there was no warning this time,” said Ali Wis, 26, a local firefighter and freelance journalist who knew some of the victims.
He and others at the funeral think Israel must have suspected that one or more of the men who were killed were members of Hezbollah, though they said no one in the community had any knowledge that they were.
The attack horrified the local community. One of the victims was blown out of the building and pronounced dead by the ambulance crew who had rushed to the scene. After her body was placed in the morgue’s cooler, a medic noticed that she was still breathing and rushed her to a hospital, according to local media.
The people who died, members of three families, were descendants of the Palestinians who were forced out of their homes in 1948, when the state of Israel was formed, their friends at the funeral said. Among the dead were six women, three men and two children.
Eleven people from three Palestinian families died, including two children.Siegfried Modola/The Globe and Mail
The attack came on the 13th day of the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran, which encouraged Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon to launch rockets into northern Israel. Israel has responded with relentless attacks in southern Lebanon, up to the Litani River, on South Beirut and in the Bekaa Valley, which runs parallel to the Syrian border – all aimed at killing the Hezbollah fighters who survived the 2024 Hezbollah-Israel war.
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The Lebanese casualty count has climbed every day. On Friday, the official Account of the Disaster Risk Management Unit of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers put the number of killed and wounded at 773 and 1,933, respectively.
An imam leads funeral prayers for Abdulhadi Khaskia, 28, who was killed in the Israeli airstrike on the Sidon apartment block.Siegfried Modola/The Globe and Mail
It also put the number of registered IDPs – internally displaced persons – at more than 830,000, equivalent to 15 per cent of Lebanon’s population. Most of them came from southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs, both of which came under Israeli evacuation orders. The IDPs have overwhelmed Beirut. They are living in schools and hotels, on the streets, in their cars, in tents on the beaches and in parks and in the Beirut sports arena.
The dead include 12 medics who were killed late Friday at a clinic in the southern village of Burj Qalaouiyah, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.
Israel’s Telegram post on Friday said only that Israeli forces “completed several additional waves of strikes on Hezbollah infrastructure in Beirut and southern Lebanon.” Later, Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued an Arabic statement warning that “military use of medical facilities must cease,” implying the clinic was linked to Hezbollah.
Mourners attend Khaskia's funeral.Siegfried Modola/The Globe and Mail
There is no sign that the new Hezbollah-Israel war will end any time soon, despite international pleas for restraint. On Saturday, French President Emmanuel Macron offered to mediate a ceasefire in Lebanon. “Everything must be done to stop Lebanon from descending into chaos,” he wrote on social media.
Residents in Beirut have received an ominous sign that Israel fully intends to continue its strikes on Lebanon − and perhaps launch a full-scale invasion of the southern parts of the country and the Bekaa Valley, which Israel considers a Hezbollah stronghold.
Israel dropped leaflets over Beirut on Friday afternoon urging citizens to disarm Hezbollah, which it called “Iran’s shield.”
Some of the thousands of leaflets referred to the Israeli invasion and destruction of Gaza, which has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health authorities, as “a remarkable success.”
Earlier Friday, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz warned the Lebanese government that it must uphold its commitment to disarm Hezbollah.
“The Lebanese government and the State of Lebanon will pay an increasingly hefty price in hits on national Lebanese infrastructure used by Hezbollah terrorists,” he said.