The face of Hassan Ali Al Jabal tells a story of profound grief. He speaks of his wife and four daughters, his voice thick with a pain that cuts deep. Any fleeting smile, born from a memory of brighter days, quickly fades as he prays for their recovery from the unimaginable trauma they have endured.
His family was at their home in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley on March 5 when it was struck by an Israeli missile. Hassan, who was not present at the time, raced home upon hearing the devastating news, desperately searching for his loved ones.
“I got there and there wasn’t anything [left], no house or anything, no warning or anything, just like that, one strike,” he recounted, his voice barely a whisper.
He eventually located three of his daughters and his wife in two different hospitals, all suffering from severe injuries and described as “totally broken.” But his youngest, Zeinab, was missing. His frantic pleas to hospital staff for any news of the ten-year-old girl were met with a chilling question: they had recovered a leg from the strike site and needed to confirm if it belonged to a child of that age.
“The missile hit her and blew her to pieces. They only found her in bits,” Hassan revealed, the words a testament to a horror no parent should ever face. He prefers to remember Zeinab through the photos and videos he cherishes – images of a bright, beaming young girl. “Yeah, this is Hezbollah — tell [Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu this is the terrorist you killed,” he declared, his grief hardening into defiance.
In the nearly four weeks of Israeli military operations across Lebanon, the death toll has climbed to almost 1,100, with over 100 children among the deceased and more than 3,000 injured. Hassan has unequivocally labelled both Mr Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump as “criminals,” questioning the morality of such violence. “How can God let someone kill someone like that, how?” he asked, his voice laced with anguish. “It’s not in religion, or in the Quran, or the Bible. There’s no rule that you can kill someone.”
The ABC reached out to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment regarding the strike on Libbaya, including the target and the reasons for the attack, providing specific details of the date, time, and location. Despite initial promises of a response and requests for more time, the IDF ultimately declined to comment prior to publication and did not respond to further correspondence.
Displaced by Conflict
The conflict with Israel has forced one million Lebanese to flee their homes, becoming internally displaced within their own country. This escalation followed the spread of the Iran war into Lebanon, initiated when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in solidarity with Tehran. Israel has since demanded the evacuation of Hezbollah strongholds in southern Beirut and the entirety of southern Lebanon, from the border to the Zahrani River, signalling its intention to annex territory south of the Litani River.
The Al Jabal family resides in Libbaya, a village in the western Bekaa Valley. When Israel issued warnings of impending attacks on southern Lebanon in response to Hezbollah rocket fire on northern Israel, the family made the difficult decision to evacuate. “My kids get really scared and my wife gets scared, so I got up,” Hassan explained. “We all got in the car and we left at 2am to another region, a region safer for us. We rented a house, we stayed there.”
However, after the initial days passed without their village being targeted, they returned to retrieve belongings. This occurred two more times before the tragic strike.
A Plea for Silence
On the third day, March 5, the family remained for iftar dinner, breaking their fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, with plans to depart shortly afterwards. Hassan heard the Israeli fighter jets around 4pm, just moments before the explosion devastated the town. As he rushed home, locals, given the village’s isolation, were desperately ferrying the dead and wounded to nearby hospitals in private vehicles.
“I was lost. I steadied myself so that I could drive but I didn’t know where my kids were or what had happened to them and who’s where,” Hassan recalled, the disorientation of that moment still palpable.
Hassan’s other daughters, Kawthar, 14, and Fatima, 12, are conscious but in serious condition at Beirut’s American University Hospital, requiring multiple surgeries. Fatima tragically lost an eye. His eldest daughter, Malak, 16, remains in a coma, while his wife is in intensive care.
Hassan has been unable to bring himself to inform his family of Zeinab’s death. “No way. They need to recover first,” he stated firmly. “I’ve warned all the doctors there, anyone that goes in, don’t you dare say anything about the girl. If my wife knew she’d kill herself. If she knew about Zeinab she’d kill herself immediately.”
A State in Crisis?
For the residents of southern Lebanon, war with Israel is a recurring and devastating reality. The region endured Israeli occupation from 1982 to 2000, and has since been subjected to repeated military offensives. The memory of that occupation remains deeply etched in Hassan’s mind; he lost his ten-year-old brother to Israeli forces in 1982, along with an uncle and cousin, and his mother was seriously injured. It was during this period of occupation that Hezbollah emerged as a resistance movement against Israel.
Hezbollah, designated a terrorist organisation by many nations, including Australia, has been involved in numerous conflicts with Israel. The Lebanese government has accused Hezbollah of drawing the nation into the war with Iran by targeting Israel in support of its Iranian allies.
Hassan, however, does not hold Hezbollah solely responsible for initiating strikes against Israel. Instead, he places blame on the Lebanese government for allowing the situation to deteriorate, thereby providing Israel with a pretext for attack, and on Western nations for enabling Israel’s actions. “Not a single person from the government came to us [in the south] even from the very beginning, before Israel was even here,” he lamented. “We have a failed state … they’re using Hezbollah as an excuse. It’s got nothing to do with Hezbollah — Hezbollah was created to defend, the state abandoned us.”
Exhausted, Hassan admits to sleeping very little but insists he must remain strong for his surviving children. “I cry and cry and cry about Zeinab a lot, but I pull myself together in front of my kids because I don’t want to upset them,” he shared, his voice heavy with sorrow. “She’s gone, I can’t do anything about it, I can’t bring her back.”
Children Bearing the Brunt of the Violence
Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta, founder of the conflict medicine program at the American University Hospital in Beirut, described the current situation in Lebanon as “much more intense” than in previous conflicts. “What we’re seeing is children whose homes have been bombed by Israel, and therefore they’re being very severely wounded,” he told the ABC. “But in addition to the physical wounds that are complex and compound, they either have parents who’ve been killed or siblings who’ve been killed. This is much more intense than the previous war … it’s looking like a pattern that’s very similar to Gaza rather than to the previous wars here or to other wars anywhere else.”
He detailed the horrific injuries sustained by many children arriving at the hospital. “These are blast injuries — so the blast wave, the shrapnel, debris, and then the homes are collapsing on top of them,” Dr Abu Sitta explained. “So you have kids with shrapnel in the face, in the eyes, you have burns, major fractures, multiple fractures, some of these with the soft tissue on top being shorn off. And so all of these kids are what we call polytrauma, so multiple parts of the body are injured.”
Despite extensive experience working in conflict zones, including Gaza, Dr Abu Sitta and his team are operating under immense pressure. “Yesterday I had an 11-year-old boy brought to the emergency department, his injuries were moderate, but he hadn’t been told that his parents had been killed and his sister had been killed,” he recounted. “You’re supposed to kind of carry on knowing that that child’s life has been completely and irrevocably altered, that he’s now on his own and that this physical wound is the least of the wounds that he will carry.”
Allegations of Targeting Healthcare
Dr Abu Sitta has levelled accusations against Israel, alleging deliberate targeting of healthcare facilities and workers during attacks in southern Lebanon. “As the survivor of the Israeli bombing of the Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza, I know firsthand the policy of targeting the health system,” he stated. “And I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it in the previous war in Lebanon. We’re seeing it now.”
When questioned by the ABC about these accusations, the IDF again refused to comment prior to publication. Dr Sitta highlighted that some patients are themselves “paramedics in the health systems.” “We had an adult paramedic in our intensive care unit,” he noted. “You see these brave ambulance people being intentionally targeted during their work, and many of them have been killed.”
Earlier this week, Lebanon’s health ministry reported that over 40 paramedics had been killed in Israeli strikes. Two were laid to rest in Nabatieh on Thursday. The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed on Saturday that nine more paramedics had been killed and seven injured. Tragically, three journalists also lost their lives in southern Lebanon on the same day. A health clinic in Bourj Qalawiyah was struck the previous week, resulting in the deaths of 12 people.
