BEIRUT: Qassem Al-Qadhi left his home in east Lebanon this weekend to buy bread for 17 family members, but when he returned they were all dead. A Zionist air strike on Sunday hit the village of Zaboud in the Bekaa valley, killing a whole family, the national news agency NNA said. Qadhi said it was his wife, children and grandchildren. They were killed in an instant. The 57-year-old says the only member of the family who survived was his 25-year-old son Hussein, who had headed off to do his military service just before the strike. “It was 11 am. We were all sitting in front of the house and then I went to buy them bread,” he told AFP by phone.

While he was at the bakery he heard a loud explosion, he said. “I tried to call them, then rushed home but there was no one left. Just body parts,” Qadhi said. “Seventeen people — including my son’s fiancee and her mother, my wife, my three sons and two daughters, and seven grandchildren,” he said. “Seventeen martyrs in my home.”

They included his oldest son Mohammad, 38, who was working as an electrician. And his two youngest, Ali and Mehdi, who worked with him planting the land and looking after livestock. And his two daughters Zaynab, 22, and Fatima, 18, who had been studying at university. Qassem speaks of his seven grandchildren — the youngest aged just two and half years old and the oldest nine — as if they are still alive.

‘Were going to get married’

To compound their devastating loss, he and his surviving son are now homeless. “We don’t have a home any more,” Qadhi said. “There’s nowhere left for us to sleep except the fields and orchards.” His surviving son Hussein is still in shock and trying to process what has happened. As well of his mother and siblings, the Zionist strike killed his fiancee just days before their planned wedding.

“We were going to get married on October 12, but my love is gone — gone in a massacre. I don’t know what to say,” he said. Hussein said he left for his military service early on Sunday, and received the news shortly after reporting for duty. “It was such a shock,” he said. “Two hours earlier, I had been with them, and then suddenly no one was left.”

He said no one had expected a strike on their tiny village some 125 kilometers (77 miles) from the border with the Zionist entity. “We used to feel safe,” he said. The entity says it has been targeting Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in increased air strikes since last week. But reports have emerged of whole families in Lebanon being killed in the raids.

According to official Lebanese figures, hundreds of people have died and a million more have been forced to flee their homes. At least 558 people were killed on Monday last week alone, the deadliest day of violence since the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war. The following day, Health Minister Firass Abiad told reporters “the vast majority, if not all, of those killed” that day were “unarmed people in their homes”.

‘We collected their body parts’

Human Rights Watch warned on Wednesday that Zionist strikes in Lebanon were “placing civilians across the country at grave risk of harm”. It stressed that “the presence of a Hezbollah commander, rocket launcher, or other military facility in a populated area” did “not justify attacking the area without regard to the civilian population”. The Lebanese news agency has reported at least four similar cases of entire families being wiped out by Zionist strikes.

In the southern village of Dawoudiya, Najah Diab lost 10 family members on Monday, according to the NNA. “My family were civilians ... My mother was an old lady who was 75 who didn’t even go out any more. My 54-year-old older brother was sick and out of work,” Diab said. She said she also lost her sister, niece, three other brothers, the family of one of her brothers, and a cousin.

“I only have my oldest nephew left,” she said, adding that he was a university student. The strikes destroyed a four-storey building. “They were looking out of the window and a rocket fell on them,” she said. “The building collapsed and their bodies were torn apart. We collected their body parts,” Diab said. “It’s unbelievable. They were all civilians.” — AFP