BEIRUT: A day after Zionist warplanes flattened their building, Lebanese residents helped rescuers scour the rubble for survivors, still reeling from the rare strike in the country’s far north. The bombing killed at least eight people in Ain Yaacoub, one of the northernmost villages the Zionist entity has struck, far from Lebanon’s southern border. "They hit a building where more than 30 people lived without any evacuation warning,” said Mustafa Hamza, who lives near the site of the strike. "It’s an indescribable massacre.”
The Zionist entity intensified its attacks on Lebanon in September, mainly targeting south Beirut and eastern and southern Lebanon. But Zionist airstrikes have killed people across the country. On Sunday, Lebanon said a Zionist strike killed 23 people, including seven children, in the village of Almat — a rare strike north of the capital. Earlier this month, authorities said a Zionist strike on a residential building killed at least 20 people in Barja, a town south of Beirut that is outside Hezbollah’s area of influence.
Following Monday’s strike on Ain Yaacoub, residents joined rescuers, using bare hands to sift through dust and chunks of concrete, hoping to find survivors. The health ministry said the death toll was expected to rise. On the ground, people could be seen pulling body parts from the rubble in the morning, following a long night of search operations. In near-darkness, rescuers had struggled to locate survivors, using mobile phone lights and car headlamps in a remote area where national grid power is scarce.
‘People are shocked’
For years, Syrians fleeing war in their home country, along with more recently displaced Lebanese escaping Zionist strikes, sought refuge in the Akkar region near the Syrian border, once seen as a haven. "The situation is dire. People are shocked,” Hamza told AFP. "People from all over the region have come here to try to help recover the victims.” The village, inhabited mostly by Sunni Muslims and Christians, lies far from the strongholds of Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim movement.
A security source said Monday’s air strike targeted a Hezbollah member who had relocated with his family to the building in Ain Yaacoub from south Lebanon. Local official Rony Al-Hage told AFP that it was the northernmost Zionist attack since September. "The people who were in my house were my uncle, his wife, and my sisters ... A Syrian woman and her children who had been living here for 10 years, were also killed,” said Hashem Hashem, the son of the building’s owner. His relatives had fled the Zionist entity’s onslaught on south Lebanon seeking a safe haven in the Akkar region more than a month ago, he said. — AFP