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Nabatieh had been emptied. After Israel issued displacement orders and carried out relentless bombardment, the population of the southern Lebanese city has fallen from 60,000 to just 450, civil defence crews say.
But, in a matter of hours, they returned. As the ceasefire with Israel took effect at midnight, people began to travel back to the city almost immediately. Cars rolled in before dawn and families stepped over rubble to reach what was left of their homes.
“Half an hour in, they were already coming back,” said Hussein Jaber, a civil defence worker who never left Nabatieh, hunkering down near Najdeh Hospital. “Nabatieh is filled with life again. People are streaming in, already fixing their houses.”
For weeks, that activity had diminished, and a handful of emergency workers became the city’s lifeline. They distributed food, pulled survivors from debris and buried the dead. Most rarely left the hospital compound, one of the few places considered relatively safe. They lived, ate and prayed with one another and, increasingly, mourned together.
Relentless explosions tore through the city on Thursday, cloaking it in black smoke. Rescuers described it as a “particularly hard” day, but not an unexpected one. Israel has a well-established pattern of intensifying strikes in the final hours before a truce takes effect.
A day before the ceasefire, The National’s reporters saw heavy bombardment around the hospital and near a cemetery, where rescuers were burying colleagues killed in a quadruple Israeli strike. Charred cars and gutted homes lined empty roads. About 170 families had remained in the town and its outskirts, holding on through the final days of strikes.
The attacks injured many people that day. The National's reporters saw a man rushing his wounded neighbour to hospital after a strike hit his house. A door handle on the car was stained with blood.
Israel says it is launching attacks against Hezbollah. In Lebanon, many see a sustained assault on a cultural and social hub in the south.
Nabatieh is one of southern Lebanon’s oldest urban centres and stands about 80km from Beirut. The city has long linked the mountains to the coast and its roots stretch back to Phoenician times, while its name tied to Nabataean traders moving between Sidon and Damascus.
At its centre stood Souk Al Ithnayn, or the Monday Market, a fixture for about 500 years. More than a marketplace, it was a weekly ritual, surviving Ottoman rule, civil war and years of Israeli occupation, until this war devastated it.
By late 2024, about 85 per cent of the city’s buildings were damaged or destroyed, along with roughly 300 businesses. What remained was hit again when fighting resumed in March.
There had been a flicker of recovery after the ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel in late 2024. Rubble was cleared, a handful of shops reopened and life edged back cautiously. But the recovery was fragile as reconstruction largely fell to private efforts, while the Lebanese state, deep in an economic crisis, was unable to cover the billions needed and foreign aid remained tied to reforms that have not yet materialised.
Then the war returned. Fighting resumed on March 2 this year after Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel. The Iran-backed group said it was avenging the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes and responding to more than a year of near-daily ceasefire breaches by Israel.
Israel retaliated with force that was described as “disproportionate” by EU and western officials – and civilians in Lebanon have paid the heaviest toll. At least 2,000 people, including more than 170 children, have been killed since then, Lebanese authorities say. On Thursday, US President Donald Trump announced a 10-day ceasefire.
Last week, more than 25 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Nabatieh on one day, including 12 members of the Lebanese security forces. In the final hours before the latest ceasefire, Israel again pounded Nabatieh, including areas around the hospital where emergency crews were still operating.
“The attacks and destruction intensified to a fever pitch in Nabatieh yesterday,” said Mr Jaber. “There was even a strike exactly one minute before the ceasefire took effect.”
In the aftermath of the war, the celebration of the civil defence crews was short-lived. Their work was still not over. Today, they will visit sites of destruction that were previously inaccessible, Mr Jaber said. They will begin the work of removing bodies from beneath the rubble.
