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The main road to southern Lebanon was choked with traffic on Friday as displaced families travelled back home weeks after fleeing Israeli strikes, defying official warnings over the fragile ceasefire.
The 10-day truce between Israel and Lebanon took effect after more than six weeks of fighting that left more than 2,000 people dead in Lebanon and displaced more than one million.
For hours, The National's reporters were stuck in long queues of cars, many piled high with mattresses and belongings, as families made their way south. Some travelled in lorries packed with all they owned.
Along the motorway, young men handed out water to ease the journey for families enduring hours-long delays on their way home. Many ignored the Lebanese military's recommendation to refrain from returning owing to the tenuous nature of the truce.
The began their journeys before dawn, with people seen walking or riding scooters across the Qasmiyeh Bridge near Tyre, the only remaining crossing in the western region linking southern Lebanon to the rest of the country. The bridge was hit hours before the ceasefire and was hastily patched up.
Some travellers waved the yellow flag of Hezbollah, as well as the Lebanese flag. People gathered on bridges along the road to welcome southerners, cheerfully waving and playing music.
Some are unable to return to their homes in the south because Israeli troops remain on Lebanese soil following a ground invasion aimed at carving out a "security zone”. Others have nothing to return to after their villages along the border were destroyed by the Israeli military.
The Israeli military has told residents not to return south of the Litani River, 30km away from the Lebanon-Israel border – an order ignored by the tens of thousands who headed home.
A woman held a boot out of her car window as she drove through the heavy traffic. A bouquet of yellow roses was inside the boot. “I’m going to Ayta Al Shaab, if I can get to it,” she said.
The flowers represented her son, Ali Abdelnabi – a doctor and member of Hezbollah killed weeks ago as the Israeli military advanced into the village, which has now been bulldozed. She will also have to find a way to cross the Litani after Israel destroyed crossings to the south, severing it from the rest of the country.
With Israeli troops still in areas close to the border, she risks being shot at when she visits her son's grave, but she did not appear worried. “The living are tired,” she said. "And the dead are at peace.”
A man driving south with his wife and three children said they were going back to their home in Tyre. “We’ll cross the bridge. We’ll find a way. And if we die, we’ll die together,” he said.
Although glad of the respite from conflict and happy to be travelling home, he was unhappy with the changes the war had brought. “Last year, the Israelis were occupying five points in south Lebanon," he said. "Now they’re occupying dozens.”
