Shock, grief as Israeli Lebanon strike kills 10 Syrians
WADI AL-KAFUR, Lebanon
Sobbing relatives thronged Sheikh Ragheb Hospital on Saturday after an Israeli airstrike killed 10 Syrians, including two children, who had escaped war at home only to die in southern Lebanon.
The early morning strike hit a building in the Wadi al-Kafur area of Nabatieh, killing the 10, including a mother and her two children, according to Lebanon's health ministry.
Israel's military stated that aircraft had struck a Hezbollah weapons storage facility.
At the hospital, relatives and friends of the victims expressed shock and anger at their sudden deaths, with women dressed in black weeping and wailing.
"Two of my sister's children were killed, another is in intensive care, and my other nephew is also in intensive care," said Hussein Al-Hussein, holding back tears as he listed his relatives killed or wounded in the strike.
"They were sleeping; they didn’t know anything. They were young laborers, and the Israeli air force targeted them."
The civilian toll from the strike was one of the highest in southern Lebanon since Hezbollah and Israel began exchanging near-daily cross-border fire during the Gaza war.
The official Lebanese National News Agency reported that the casualties were Syrian refugees and laborers working at the factory that had been hit.
Israel's military, on its Telegram channel, said its air force had struck a Hezbollah weapons storage facility overnight "in the area of Nabatieh," about 12 kilometers (seven miles) from the border with Israel.
Omar al-Shahud, who works in the factory, said he was lucky to escape death because he did not live in the targeted annex.
"Six of my relatives were killed. They had nothing to do with the war," he said angrily.
"They were workers who came here to earn a living."
- In Red Shrouds
In a nearby room, grieving relatives mourned a family of four: the factory building's concierge, his wife, and two children aged four and one and a half, a family member told AFP.
Their bodies were shrouded in red cloth and adorned with flowers.
Lebanon has long relied heavily on Syrians for manual labor, especially in agriculture and construction.
Beirut says it currently hosts around two million Syrians, with nearly 785,000 registered with the United Nations.
Earlier in August, the health ministry reported that four Syrians were killed in an Israeli strike in the south.
The cross-border violence between Lebanon and Israel has killed 581 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but including at least 128 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.
At the site of Saturday's strike, concrete rubble, metal wreckage, and a few items of children's clothing and shoes were all that remained of the targeted building.
Standing beside his bombed-out factory, Hussein Tahmaz insisted the facility was "100 percent civilian."
He pointed to the wreckage of a red truck.
"Here we used to park and load our goods," Tahmaz said.
The building that was hit was an annex to a two-story factory warehouse where the concierge, his small family, and workers lived, Mayor Khodr Saad told AFP.
"What did these children do to deserve this? They fled their country to escape death, only to find it here?" he said.