'It was just a gathering spot': Mourners at Ain Al Hilweh question Israel's strike on Lebanese camp

Relatives gathered at mosque in Sidon say target of Tuesday's attack on 'Hamas compound' was a public recreation area

Funerals were held two days after the Israeli strike on Ain Al Hilweh camp in Lebanon. AP

Members of Hamas and Hezbollah attended funerals on Thursday for some of the 14 people killed by Israel’s attack on Ain Al Hilweh camp in Lebanon – the victims mostly young men and boys, rather than officials from the militant groups Israel has declared war on.

Tuesday’s attack was one of Israel’s deadliest strikes on Lebanon since a ceasefire with Hezbollah was announced in November last year. The Israeli military claimed it had fired at a Hamas training compound, which the group denied.

“They were just playing football,” said Maher Khalil, the uncle of one of the victims. His 18-year-old nephew, Mohammad Khalil, was killed inside a recreation centre at the camp when it was struck. “They’d been playing there all summer. There’s nothing political about the place. It was just a gathering spot,” Mr Khalil said at his nephew’s funeral.

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Mohammad was “a normal kid, top of his class”, said Mr Khalil. “He had the best manners, and everyone knew how polite and respectable he was.“

Residents who came to pay their respects told The National that the recreation centre, which is near a mosque, had open sides and an aluminium roof. Young men often gathered there to play sports and socialise.

Some of those killed were members of a Hamas-run boy scout group. Their comrades, identifiable by their scout uniforms and neckerchiefs, carried Hamas posters in the funeral procession.

Becoming affiliated with a Palestinian faction from a young age is common in Lebanon’s refugee camps, where scout groups typically participate in cultural and religious activities, and are neither armed nor militarised, residents said.

Political affiliation alone does not determine whether someone is a legitimate military target under international humanitarian law.

Mourners carry a coffin during the funeral procession at Ain Al Hilweh. AFP

First response

Ain Al Hilweh residents were shocked to see a playground turned into a scene of bloodshed.

Mahmoud, who declined to share his real name, said he was one of the first responders on the scene after the attack.

He was buying a sandwich just 100 metres from the centre when the ground shook and everything went red. He ran to the site of the strike.

“I saw bodies torn to pieces in front of me, there was blood and fire everywhere,” he told The National. “I started loading people – pieces of people – into a pick-up truck before the ambulances came.”

Latifeh Khaled Al Sedawi said her nephew Jihad, 28, who was killed in the strike, had worked in agriculture and had no political affiliation. “We don’t know why they did this,” she said of Israeli soldiers. “During the war they only struck the camp once. So we never imagined they would hit the camp during a ceasefire.”

Survivors of the attack told her Jihad was killed in the second missile strike and that his head was blown off. “These are images that can’t be described,” she said. “They killed children in the middle of a residential area. There is no ceasefire for us."

​Israel has been intensifying its strikes on Lebanon, breaching the ceasefire conditions thousands of times, warning it would further escalate if Hezbollah and other armed groups refuse to surrender all their weapons.

“The Israeli message to Lebanon remains the same: maximum pressure to disarm Hezbollah and maximum pressure as well on the Palestinian factions, particularly Hamas, which is of course present in Palestinian camps, Ain Al Hilweh being the largest and most emblematic,” political analyst Karim El Mufti said.

Mourners surround the coffin of one of the Palestinian victims. AP

Under the ceasefire’s terms, all non-state armed groups in Lebanon are supposed to disarm, while Israel is supposed to withdraw from southern Lebanon and stop violating Lebanese airspace.

Lebanon has taken unprecedented steps to enforce a monopoly on weapons – efforts which Israel has deemed insufficient, accusing Lebanon of dragging its feet. Instead, Israel has maintained a military occupation of five points inside Lebanese territory and operates freely in two buffer areas within the country’s south.

“It’s Israel keeping Lebanon under the knife, saying: ‘You have until the end of the year, and this is just a taste of what’s coming if Hezbollah isn’t fully disarmed,’ Mr El Mufti added.

But for Maher Awayad, leader of Ansar Allah, one of the armed groups allied with Hezbollah, the killings have strengthened militant groups’ argument for refusing to disarm.

“It was a football game, a sports centre, inside the camp and open to everyone. Calling it military training is a lie,” he said. “The Palestinian people will keep their weapons and we will not renounce our arms inside the camp. We are the resistance and we will not withdraw.”