How Israeli rockets destroyed a Mediterranean village in Lebanon

“Why, why us?” shouted Milad Eide, his pain clearly visible as the phone line went dead.

An hour earlier, he was putting out a fire in a house hit by an Israeli missile. While he was there, one bomb hit another.

His village, Alma al-Shaab, is in southern Lebanon, just over a kilometer from the Israeli border.

It has been locked in cross-border fighting since October between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia operating in southern Lebanon.

Officials said at least 800 residents had fled and only about 100 remained.

“No one knows why they attacked our house,” Mr Eide said. “This is not our war.”

Lebanon’s Mediterranean coastline is dotted with picturesque towns and villages, with winding streets lined with bougainvillea.

Residents say Alma al-Shaab is the most beautiful of them all.

The only Christian village in the predominantly Shia Muslim south, Alma al-Shaab sits on a hill with stunning views of the surrounding countryside, all the way to the sea in the distance.

It is also clearly visible from northern Israel.

Due to its proximity to the border, the area has been a key target of Israeli forces over the past nine months.

after one day Hamas attacks Israel on October 7Hezbollah and its allies fired waves of rockets from Lebanon into the disputed border area in an apparent show of support for the armed group.

Israel retaliated with drone strikes, and both sides have since significantly escalated the scale and intensity of attacks on the Israeli-Lebanese border.

As of the end of May, Alma al-Shaab had been attacked 188 times by Israeli forces, according to the Israeli army. beirut city laboratorya research center using data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled).

The Israeli army said it was targeting Hezbollah fighters and infrastructure and retaliating for attacks on Israeli military bases in northern Israel.

But some senior Lebanese officials have accused it of carrying out a scorched-earth strategy that has made the entire area uninhabitable.

Villagers interviewed by the BBC were unwilling to discuss whether Hezbollah or other armed groups using Alma al-Shaab to attack Israel. One person suggested that locals tried to prevent the militants from using their land, but failed.

No one was killed in Alma al-Shaab.

But Deputy Mayor William Haddad said Israeli bombing had so far completely destroyed 10 houses, damaged 120 others and hit the town’s main water tank.

About 12 square kilometers (3,000 acres) of agricultural and forest land burned, he added.

Under normal circumstances, 900 people live in Alma al-Shaab, but in the summer, when immigrants return to their ancestral villages, there are about 1,500 people.

Mr. Haddad said there were only about 100 people left, and no children. Memories of past conflicts hang heavy in the air.

people remember Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied the south until 2000the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, and countless skirmishes.

“Maybe 90% of Alma al-Shaab just left within a day [after 8 October] Because they don’t want to go through what they did in 2006,” Mr Haddad said.

Maria Shaya, 31, spoke of a childhood filled with attacks and bombings and of constant fear of violence in her home. At 18, she left her hometown to study in Beirut.

“I can’t remember a time when there wasn’t a conflict.”

She could recall in detail the sounds of bombs, drones and fighter jets. But when she came home in recent years, she said, her “brain chose not to listen.”

Since fighting resumed last year, she has not visited her father, who refuses to leave the village.

It was a painful reality that contradicted her pride in the place.

“I love Alma,” she said. “The air smells different there. It’s green and lush and you can walk around and pick things from the trees to eat.”

Time spent under the lemon tree with grandparents and cousins ​​is now a distant memory.

She, like hundreds of others, doesn’t know when she will be able to return.

“We don’t want to get into a war,” she said. “I just miss coming home.”

Haddad said the current conflict is very different from previous conflicts.

“What happened in 2006 was over in 30 or 33 days,” Mr Haddad said. “We’ve probably been here for seven months now, [still going] exist. No one knows what the limits are.

According to the Beirut City Laboratory, Israel has carried out more than 5,300 attacks in Lebanon since October 7. They reported that Hezbollah and its allied groups have attacked Israel approximately 1,200 times.

The Israel Defense Forces said on June 6 that some 4,850 missiles were fired at Israel from Lebanese territory. In early April, Israeli forces attacked more than 4,300 “Hezbollah targets” in Lebanon.

Both sides say they are targeting only military targets, but both Lebanese and Israeli civilians have been severely affected by the fighting.

According to United Nations data at the end of May, at least 88 civilians have been killed in Lebanon and more than 93,000 people have been displaced from their homes. Across the border, Israeli media reported that 10 civilians had been killed and about 60,000 people had been displaced.

The violence has taken a mental, physical and financial toll on Alma Shaab residents, most of whom have fled to cities such as Beirut and Sidon.

The deputy mayor said people who have a second home or relatives to stay with are lucky. Others must rent a house, often living with two or three other families.

Many say incomes have dried up and children are unable to attend school.

Some residents insist they will stay no matter what.

Milad Eid is one of them. “You never know when the clouds are going to bombard you or what’s going to attack you,” he said.

But if he leaves, he fears “facing the same problems that Palestinians face when they leave their homeland”.

Mr. Eid is referring to the so-called Nakba, or disasterby Palestinians.

Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, and during the war that began the next day, as many as 750,000 Palestinians living on the land fled or were expelled from their homes.

Israel would not allow them and their descendants to return.

“They became refugees and 70 or 75 years later they are still crying for their country, their villages and their houses,” he said.

When it comes to the Lebanese-Israeli border today, most international observers are not calling the situation an all-out war.

But for the people who live there, there’s not much else.