'We haven’t caught a break': Rescue workers dig as Dahieh residents await news of missing loved ones

Israel carried out a strike on a residential building in a highly populated area of southern Beirut, killing senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil and numerous others

Live updates: Follow the latest on Israel-Gaza

Dozens gathered near an area roped off by the Lebanese army late into the night, waiting for news of loved ones believed to be trapped under the rubble following an Israeli missile attack that leveled a residential building in Beirut’s suburb of Dahieh on Friday.

Israel's strike killed at least 31 people, including three children and seven women, and wounded 68, Lebanon's health ministry said. The Israeli army said the target of the strike was senior Hezbollah commander Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil, who was meeting underneath the building along with other commanders of the group's elite Radwan Force.

The death toll was expected to rise as rescue workers continued their efforts well into the next day. By afternoon, 23 people remained missing under the rubble. On the evening of the strike, a teary-eyed woman in a black hijab asked Red Crescent workers for news of her daughter.

Rescuers work at the scene of an Israeli missile strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut. AP

“I went to St George hospital and St Therese and no one knows where my daughter is. There has to be some way you can find out,” she implored the group of paramedics. “Where is my daughter?”

By morning, videos and photos of the four-year-old Naya and numerous others would be all over Lebanese social media, listed as “still missing”.

"If you have information about any of these people, please call the following phone number," the caption under the photos said.

A civil defence medic, who identified himself only as Hassan, told The National there was nothing they could do in many of these cases.

"Most of the time we don’t know if the person has been rescued yet, if they're alive or dead, or still under the rubble, or what hospital they went to,” he said, adding he had been working at the rescue site for hours.

The exhausted paramedic proudly told The National he was part of a team who had pulled a young man out of the rubble, still alive. In the next second he remembered the moments following the rescue and his face fell again. “We pulled his wife out too…. But she was already dead.”

By Hassan’s assessment, many may still be trapped under the rubble of what was once a 10-storey apartment building situated on a busy street.

The exhausted medic said he had been running on adrenaline for four days, starting when communication devices, typically used by Hezbollah members to by-pass Israeli interception, simultaneously exploded across Lebanon in an unprecedented operation attributed to Israel’s Mossad agency. First they collected people whose fingers and eyes were ripped away by exploding pagers, he told The National. Then, somehow more absurdly, the same thing happened with walky-talkies. Now paramedics are digging through concrete to find survivors from the Israeli assassination that killed numerous civilians.

“This is a difficult time for Lebanon. For all of us. We haven’t caught a break,” Hassan said, sipping a quick coffee with other colleagues inside an ambulance.

Israeli strike targets Hezbollah commander in Beirut's southern suburbs

00:34

Near the vehicle, dazed residents and other rescue workers sat in a restaurant, seeking a brief moment of respite.

Dahieh residents, some covered in blood or swathed in bandages, sat in plastic chairs near the security cordon. Others, some of them sobbing, paced up and down the street, caressing their prayer beads. They stepped over a pile of shattered glass mixed with blood on the pavement.

At times, the crowd grew agitated as rescuers carrying stretchers rushed into the closed-off area.

An old man speaking under a pseudonym, Ahmad, said he had been waiting hours to know whether his relatives – including four children under 10 years old – had survived.

“I called them as soon as I heard the news,” he told The National, his eyes reddened by exhaustion. “They never answered.”

He condemned the Israeli strike attack as a “war crime”. “This is not a battlefield. This building houses families, women, and children. This is not a fair war. Only our faith makes it bearable to pay this price.”

Another resident told The National defiantly that “victory will come”. He was waiting to see if his son's friend would be found under the rubble. The whole family was missing. The children are between two and 19 years of age.