A digger poured dirt over the coffin of Ahmad Saadeh. Although he was killed in an Israeli strike on his home in the southern Lebanese village of Kafra – near the front line of Israel’s war against Hezbollah – he was being buried in Tyre.
When the burial was over, gravediggers pounded a wooden stake into the dirt and hung a plank bearing the number 12. The signpost would be Mr Saadeh's gravestone for the time being.
“We brought him here, performed the burial rites, preserved his human dignity and buried him respectfully,” said Rabih Koubayssi, a sheikh who attends burials at the temporary cemetery to pray for the souls of those who are buried there without relatives present. “He has no family here, so today we’re his family.”
Mr Saadeh, in his 60s, had refused to abandon his home despite the danger, according to the paramedics who buried him. His body was found by rescuers between waves of heavy air strikes, but because of the risk posed by the attacks it was not possible to bury him in his village.
“We bury people in their villages when we can, but we can’t do that when they’re so close to the front lines,” said a civil defence volunteer for the Rissala Scouts. “So we bury them in one of two sites here in Tyre.”
Mr Saadeh's body will be moved to his hometown when it is safe to do so.
But that time may never come.
Israeli troops have advanced into southern Lebanon with the stated aim of establishing a “security zone” up to the Litani River, as Hezbollah fights to push the invading army back.
The Israeli plan would leave almost 10 per cent of Lebanon inaccessible. Dozens of villages in the south have already been destroyed. Israel’s displacement orders, accompanied by intense bombardment in southern and eastern Lebanon, have forced more than a million people – about a fifth of the country's population – to flee their homes.
Most of southern Lebanon is depopulated, with the exception of villages with non-Shiite majorities, and the Lebanese Army has withdrawn from areas where Israeli troops are establishing a presence.
In Tyre, the residents who remain are making a last stand, fearful that, if they leave southern Lebanon, they may never return.
The war resumed when Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel to avenge the killing of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and in retaliation for Israel’s daily breaches of a one-sided ceasefire that ended months of conflict in November 2024.
The militia's decision to enter the US-Israeli war on Iran drew rare criticism from Lebanese government officials, who accused Hezbollah of taking unilateral action and dragging the country – already stricken by crises – into a conflict it may not survive.
Israel’s operation has killed more than 1,500 people in Lebanon, including many civilians, according to the Health Ministry.
'Killed twice’
The use of temporary graves is not new to Tyre, which is also under Israeli attack, although not with the same intensity as villages on the front line.
The land where Mr Saadeh was buried is owned by the Lebanese state, and has been used as a temporary graveyard several times before.
Rescuers at the site consider it the safest place in Tyre to bury southern residents. “We are standing here on state-owned land. But from our experience with the Israelis, I don’t think there is any safe place,” a volunteer rescuer with the Rissala Scouts told The National.
Rescuers know from experience that Israel has not shied away from attacking funerals close to the front line. In late March, an Israeli strike killed six paramedics who were carrying out a burial in the southern town of Zawtar, the volunteer said. “They killed the dead a second time, along with the ones burying him,” he added.
Despite the sound of Israeli bombs falling nearby and the constant buzz of drones overhead, Tyre’s main temporary cemetery has so far been spared. During the 2023-2024 war between Israel and Hezbollah, which devastated southern Lebanon, about 178 people were buried at the site, according to rescue workers.
Their bodies were later exhumed and moved to their hometowns after the war ended. The dead were also buried here during the 2006 war.
In 2024, "there were many bodies brought from the south. Sometimes the bodies arrived in pieces. They would be brought in bags,” the rescuer said.
This year is not so different.
Displaced in life and in death
Hussein Saleh found only pieces of his family after an air strike in March hit the home of his relatives in Tyre, where he had sought shelter with his wife and daughter. It took him three days to collect the remains of his five-year-old daughter Sara, his pregnant wife Hanieh and six members of his extended family.
Unable to bury his family in their front-line hometown of Ramieh, he buried them in one of Tyre’s temporary graves.
“I want them to be buried with the whole family,” Mr Saleh told The National. He added that he planned to give them real burials in Ramieh when the situation allowed.
He was too heartbroken to acknowledge that this may never happen.
At the grave where Mr Saadeh was buried, the paramedics refused to accept that neither the dead nor the living might be able to return to the south this time.
“We buried the dead here after each war,” the Rissala Scouts volunteer said defiantly. “And after each war, we gave them proper burials in their villages.”
Mr Koubayssi acknowledged the possibility, but said the temporary graveyard was a way to give hope to the loved ones of the deceased.
“This is a kind of hope that we keep for people – that they will return. We can’t take that away from them.”
