Miral Abdel Al Sater’s pink notebook flutters in the wind, surrounded by rubble and destruction. “Grade One, 2025/2026", it reads, referring to the year she hoped lay ahead. That was before Israel bombed her building and took away not only her school year, but her short life.
A torn piece of paper that resembles Elsa from the movie Frozen and a dust-covered seal toy are among the few belongings left behind by the young children who lived in the building, now dead or severely injured.
Miral is among the nine victims of a strike that destroyed a residential building in the centre of the historic city of Baalbek, in eastern Lebanon, last Wednesday. Ali Assaf is the other child killed in the attack. His body is believed to be buried somewhere beneath the rubble, after rescuers searched for hours without success.
It remains unclear who the intended target was. Israel has not yet issued a statement on the deadly strike.
Miral and Ali are among 83 children killed in Israel’s major offensive on Lebanon in just one week, after Iran-backed Hezbollah joined the war against the US and Israel in support of Tehran. The death toll rose to 394 by Sunday, the Lebanese Health Ministry said. Victims of Israeli attacks also include 42 women, nine medics and members of the Lebanese army, which is not part of the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.
Israel claims it has struck hundreds of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon and killed about 200 of the group’s fighters since the escalation began.
But since the war resumed, the Israeli military has routinely struck residential buildings, causing mass civilian casualties without any explicit target, pushing, once again, civilians to the front line of the war.
On Sunday, Israeli strikes tore through homes and wiped out families across southern Lebanon. In Nabatieh, 18 people were killed in a strike on a residential building sheltering displaced families. In the town of Anqoun, a father and his son were killed in their home. In Ghazieh, a retired officer and his nephew died when their house was hit. In Qana, near Tyre, at least three people were killed when a strike destroyed the home of a local official.
Killed in a ‘safe haven’
The day after the Baalbek strike, when The National visited the city, residents of the quiet suburban neighbourhood were still picking through the destruction. Trees were coated in the dust the Israeli strike created, the parked cars were a wreck and the surrounding buildings and their windows were shattered by debris.
Residents said they did not expect the neighbourhood, which is also home to a Sunni community, to become a target. “The neighbourhood there is very safe. The area is mixed as well, with residents there who are Sunni, and Israel usually strikes Shiite-majority neighbourhoods,” said Serin Othman, 35, a relative of a mother of three, Alaa Saleh, 26, who was killed in the strike.
She added that the building hosted displaced families from Douris, a town near Baalbek which had become unsafe because of Israeli threats. “People left Douris because of the danger, thinking it would be safer," she said. "If there had been any risk, they would not have moved.”
No such evacuation order were issued for Baalbek at the time. The strike came in the middle of the night as families slept.
“They were killed in what they thought was a safe haven,” Ms Othman said. She did not hide her political affiliation with Hezbollah, which is highly influential in Baalbek. The Shiite-majority city in the Bekaa Valley was where the group was founded in the 1980s, but she insisted that no fighters were in the building.
In 2024, The National investigated a pattern of Israeli strikes on residential buildings characterised by a lack of precautions for civilian lives, the absence of warnings and a disproportionate use of force against unclear targets or of seemingly low military value. To some extent, that pattern now appears to be repeating itself.
‘They were all civilians’
Not far away, in the Dar Al Amal hospital, an image of Ali Al Alam, former director of the medical centre, is plastered throughout the building. Israel killed him in the 2024 war while he was at a barbecue during a rare break from his intense work, as the people of Baalbek were forced to flee.
Inside are some of the victims of the attack. Eight-year old Zahiaa Assaf, Ali’s sister, lies in bed, her shattered face a bloody mess, the tiny body covered in wires, and her concerned relatives looking on as a monitor beeps.
“This little girl here, her father was killed. Her brother is still under the rubble, until now,” said Ali Assaf, a relative. “Our neighbours too, children, women … civilians were killed. There were no fighters, nothing at all."
There was palpable anger during the funeral held for the strike’s victims. Babies were killed and so were women. Ali Mazloum, an Internal Security Forces officer and father of a young boy, was also buried that day. He was killed in a drone strike while driving on a road near the city of Zahle, in the Bekaa Valley, on his way to his post in Beirut.
Men in official Lebanese uniforms also attended the funeral. The funeral was not only attended by Hezbollah members and supporters. “Death to America, Death to Israel” came the chant, reflecting the intense anger at those who caused the deaths.
“There has never been any military facility in that residential area,” Bilal Al Lakkis, a political researcher for Hezbollah, told The National. "I say to you, as journalists, look at the names of those who were killed, the martyrs. Look at their names and you will see that they are all civilians."
The National could not verify the claim independently. “Israel assumed there were resistance fighters there,” he added. “So either Israel is blind and stumbling, or it deliberately wants to make this society pay the price for its political choice”.
Hezbollah is not only a military force. The group is also deeply rooted in the social fabric of Shiite-majority areas. It is also an influential political party in Lebanon, with MPs and ministers who run civilian institutions and have long provided social services to Shiites in the absence of a strong Lebanese state.
If there is anger across Lebanon at Hezbollah for joining a war the country cannot afford, particularly outside the Shiite community, support for the group was evident at that funeral. That was seen in the yellow flags that covered the coffins and the chants from the crowd.
By indiscriminately killing the group’s fighters and devastating the communities and towns in which it holds sway, the Israeli military appears to be pursuing a strategy that observers say amounts to collective punishment. Under international humanitarian law, political affiliation is not a legitimate basis for attacking people or civilian sites.
For those who never chose to be part of the conflict, for Ali and Miral, for the orphans who have lost their parents in strikes on their homes, it is a tragedy in the making.
Amid the grieving crowd was a young boy, the son of the Internal Security Forces officer, who held the hand of his grandfather. The boy could not stop crying, unable to say a word. “There was no reason, no reason to kill him,” the old man whispered between sobs as the pair walked slowly, clinging to one another among the mourners.
