Ruins and deserted streets in Baalbek, Lebanon’s largest city, which Israel has ordered evacuated International

The bombing killed the parents of three-year-old Celine Nassif and one of her two sisters, with her body thrown far enough away that it might have saved her life. One of the girl’s few remaining relatives, her uncle Hassan, came upon hearing the noise and found her several meters away from their home. The man handed him off to other people and then ran into the house to try to save his brother and the rest of his family. Of those, he says, “only fragments remain.”

Behind her, in the pediatric intensive care unit of Dar Al Amal University Hospital in Duris, 82 kilometers east of the Lebanese capital Beirut, Celine lies in bed. She has second-degree burns over a large portion of her body, with her face also covered in lacerations. He appears to be missing an eyebrow, can barely close an eyelid and his arms are bandaged. His left leg is bent at the hip because the blast has caused an open fracture in his thigh bone. “We had to give him morphine,” says nurse Amal Haider. Another health worker tells him to keep quiet. The girl sleeps and when she wakes up she screams in pain. Or fear. Her uncle explains that if any noise awakens her from her lethargy, she lets out terrifying screams, as if she is remembering the bombing she survived four days earlier.

The village of Selin, Ain Burdai, – along with Duris and the nearby town of Baalbek – is within the red-colored zone that appeared on a map of that area of ​​the Bekaa Valley released on Wednesday by the Israeli military’s Arabic spokesman, Avichay Adrai His social network account is against the interests of Israel’s enemy in Lebanon: the Shia militia party Hezbollah.

Celine and her family had no chance of escape. According to local officials, his home, like others, was bombed without warning on Tuesday, a day before the evacuation orders, marking the latest wave of mutual attacks between Hezbollah and Israel this summer of intensification. The attack was the largest since, perpetrated by Lebanese militias. Due to the war in Gaza in October 2023.

Hours before that bombing, Israeli attacks had killed at least 67 people in the Bekaa Valley, making it the deadliest day of the war in Lebanon’s eastern plain that Hezbollah had seen since 1982. Part of that 182-kilometre-long plain is considered by Israel a breeding ground for Shia militias and a previous base for fighters battling with its forces in the strip around Lebanon’s southern border, which Israel invaded on October 1. Had done.

At least a hundred people have been killed in Israeli attacks in the valley this week. Sources close to Hezbollah say that since the first Israeli announcement on Wednesday called for the evacuation of Baalbek, Duris and Ain Burdai, “80%” of the population of those cities has fled. This party-militia organized a media tour in the area this Friday in which EL PAÍS participated.

gray powder

One of the ways to reach Baalbek, which had about 82,000 inhabitants before the war, is the road that passes through Duris. On Friday, parts of some destroyed houses lay covered with asphalt, covered with debris from bombed buildings. One of them, who was attacked at dawn, was still smoking. According to sources close to Hezbollah, a woman died in that building. Five children were also injured.

It is hard to believe that no one could survive such destruction. Only iron remains where the house once stood, two cars were melted by the explosion and debris sometimes smaller than a hand. One side wall of the adjacent house also collapsed and all the surrounding buildings were covered with dark brown dust. Apparently so, as shown in photos of survivors rescued from the debris of bombed homes in Gaza, where more than 43,000 people have died in the long year of war. According to the Lebanese government, these include 2,800 Lebanese who were killed in Israeli attacks during the same period.

“This is not the cement of the destroyed house,” says a resident who approaches after seeing the group of journalists. That dust, the man says, “is something that bombs carry. “Don’t you notice any strange smell?” He says, referring to a strange, pungent odor, which is similar to tear gas and which causes immediate headaches to those who smell it.

That unstable house, a hangar also destroyed, according to some residents, burnt cars – these were caused by drone shots – are the clearest traces of Israel’s pressure for war in the Bekaa Valley, which it considered its stronghold. Is. Hezbollah. In Duris, the strength of this militia is clearly displayed in yellow flags and posters with portraits of their leaders, many of whom were eliminated by Israel, along the road leading to Baalbek. In one of them, the face of Hassan Nasrallah, the organization’s secretary general, killed on September 27, appears above the phrase with which the leader addressed his followers in some of his speeches: “Oh, honorable people.”

Proud

The rich Roman archaeological site of Baalbek, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, lies in the center of the city, which is now semi-deserted due to Israeli evacuation orders, which also closed hotels and restaurants teeming with tourists Are. A group of the few residents left there – almost all men – gathered in the Gouraud neighborhood on Friday. Some Shia Muslim families, like most of the city’s residents, occupy neighborhoods that were once military barracks from the French colony.

Wearing tattered, tattered plastic flip-flops, many appear too poor to have anywhere to run. This does not seem to be the case for 19-year-old apprentice mechanic Abdo, who attributes his decision to stay to “pride”, but it appears to be the case for Nizar Noon, who is 62 and has been punished.

This man is left alone in his house. His family has fled and, he says, “he has no place to go.” He then takes a small bottle of wine out of his pocket, takes a sip and recognizes that it helps him overcome his fear. If poverty across Lebanon has tripled over the past decade to 44% of the population, according to the World Bank, in the area around Baalbek, some calculations put that percentage at more than 60%.

A few meters away from Nunn’s house, another house has been destroyed by Israeli shells. A fragment of a wall in the French protected area, about 50 meters from the ruins of the Roman site, has also collapsed. That strange brown dust left by the bombs covers the debris and destroyed houses. Suddenly, from nowhere, a loud bang comes.

At Dar Al Amal hospital, where Celine is based in nearby Duris, nurse Haider wondered this Friday “who will take care of the patients” if everyone leaves. At the age of 21, he had never seen children with war wounds until now. On September 23, seven minors reached his ICU. Six required intubation. He says, two other people have already brought the body. Some were unrecognizable, “disfigured by burning”; Others suffered serious head injuries. “Six of those children died,” he recalls.