Rescuers carry a man who was injured after an Israeli airstrike hit two adjacent buildings in the Ain el-Delb neighborhood, east of the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024. (Mohammad Zaatari/AP)

AIN EL DELB, Lebanon — It was Sunday, family time for most in Lebanon, and Hecham al-Baba was visiting his sister. She insisted that he and their older brother stay for lunch, hoping to prolong the warm encounter during the stressful moments.

The brother refused. Like many in Lebanon, he had not slept because of Israel’s increasingly intense airstrikes, so he went to take a nap.

Al-Baba, 60, on his annual visit from Germany to see his family in Lebanon, stayed. Donize’s sister even convinced him to call an old flame for coffee at the end. He excitedly went into the bathroom to clean up before his visitor arrived.

Within seconds, a huge boom shook the basement apartment. Al-Baba fell to the floor. Something hit him in the chest, taking his breath away. He pulled himself up and reached for the door, screaming his sister’s name. A second blast knocked him back to the floor. The ceiling of the bathroom – and the entire building above it – collapsed on its back.

An Israeli airstrike hit the six-story residential building in Ain el Delb, a neighborhood outside the coastal city of Sidon. The entire building toppled down a hillside and landed on its face, taking with it 17 apartments full of families and visitors. More than 70 people were killed and 60 were injured.

Israel said the Sept. 29 strike targeted a Hezbollah commander and claimed the building was the group’s headquarters. It could not be independently confirmed whether any of the residents belonged to Hezbollah.

In a video that surfaced online in mourning, one of the people believed to live in the building, he appeared in an old photo wearing military fatigues, a sign of his affiliation with Hezbollah.

In any case, experts say the strike illustrates Israel’s willingness to kill significant numbers of civilians in pursuit of a single target. This tactic has fueled the high death toll among Palestinians in Gaza in Israel’s year-long campaign against Hamas.

Israel has stepped up bombing of Lebanon since Sept. 23, vowing to cripple Hezbollah, which began firing into northern Israel after an Oct. 7 Hamas attack sparked the Gaza war. Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah members and infrastructure and says the group is placing military assets in civilian areas.

About 2,000 people have been killed, including Hezbollah fighters and commanders, but also hundreds of civilians, often in strikes on homes.

“It seems to be such a similar feature to Gaza, in that these are families killed together in single strikes,” said Emily Tripp, director of the London-based conflict monitoring group Airwars.

In the first week of Israel’s escalation, it struck a house in Tire province, killing a family of 15, all women and children except one Hezbollah member. A strike in Byblos killed six family members of a Hezbollah fighter who had already died in fighting a month earlier, raising questions about the quality of intelligence used in the attacks. A strike on a shack housing families of Syrian migrant workers killed 23.

The strike at Ain el Delb was one of the deadliest of the Israeli campaign. Among those killed were al-Baba’s sister, her husband and two of their children, a 20-year-old daughter and a teenager.

Al-Baba was trapped for hours, the rubble pressing him into an excruciating position, kneeling, neck twisted, face pressed to the bathroom floor, unable to feel his legs. He knew his sister’s family was dead because of the constant unanswered ringing of their phones.

“No one said a word. I didn’t hear any movement,” he said.

– People don’t know. Israel knows

The Israeli military said it had adopted evacuation procedures before acting based on information confirmed in the Ain el Delb attack. Residents who spoke to The Associated Press said they had received no warning.

“I wish we had. We would have left,” said Abdul-Hamid Ramadan, who lived on the top floor and whose wife Jinan and daughter Julia were killed. “I would have lost my house. But not my wife and daughter.”

Israel says it often issues evacuation orders before striking. But in Lebanon, as in Gaza, rights groups say advance warnings are often inadequate and come in the middle of the night or via social media.

Ramadan, a retired army officer, said he was not aware of Hezbollah members or weapons in the building, where he has lived for more than 20 years.

No one thought that the neighborhood – where most of the residents are Sunni Muslims and Christians – would be on the Israeli target list. In the building, 15 of the 17 apartments were occupied by longtime residents who all knew each other. Displaced persons from the south began arriving a week earlier, seeking shelter with relatives in the building.

Al-Baba said his sister told him before she was killed that she was worried about a much-loved Shia tenant, mainly because he had been receiving guests. She feared he might be a target of Israel and asked her brother if he should go. She decided to stay because she had no idea where to go.

Neither al-Baba nor his sister knew anything about the tenant’s connection to Hezbollah.

The Israeli strikes have raised fears among the Lebanese that their building could be hit because it houses someone Israel claims, rightly or wrongly, to be linked to Hezbollah. The building administrations asked the tenants to declare with them the names of the displaced shelters. Some refused to receive people from the south.

The first shot hit the lower floors of the building around 4:00 p.m. The Ramadan family was shocked but did not believe the building was collapsing. Only Ramadan’s wife, Jinan, ran up the stairs. A few moments passed, long enough for Ramadan’s son, Achraf, to bring Julia’s sister a glass of water to calm her down.

Then the second missile hit. The building swayed, then collapsed.

Ramadan fell from the couch, which together with a nearby wardrobe protected him from the falling ceiling. Achraf, a fitness trainer and former soldier, took shelter under the door frame. Julia fell to the floor.

For two hours, the three communicated through the rubble. Ramadan said Julia was only two meters away, her voice faint but audible. He called for help using the cell phone still in his hands.

When help came, Achraf got out first; then his father, about six hours after the strike. In the chaos, they thought Julia had been kicked out. But rescuers returned to find the 28-year-old dead. Her mother died in hospital from internal bleeding.

“I lost the cornerstone of the house: my wife, my partner and my friend,” Ramadan said. “I lost my daughter Julia… She was my joy, my smile, my future.”

They are buried in unmarked graves in a section of the Sidon cemetery dedicated to the victims of the Ain el Delb building.

As in Gaza, there is concern that the number of civilian casualties is “quite high,” given that the alleged military target is often undeclared or relatively small, said Rich Weir, senior conflict, crisis and weapons researcher at Human Rights Watch.

He said there was an “escalation in the amount of damage … the demolition of entire buildings in densely populated residential neighborhoods, which brings inherent risks to civilians.” Israel has also expanded the scope of its targets by hitting Hezbollah financial institutions, he said.

Ramadan was not surprised by the killing of so many people for a possible Hezbollah member. It’s happened before, he said.

“We hear on the news that an apartment was targeted. And people wonder who it was,” he said. “People don’t know. Israel knows.”

“Worse Than a Coffin”

At the bottom of the wreckage of the building, Hecham al-Baba was trapped in complete darkness for four hours, huddled with his legs bent beneath him. The falling door had broken two of his ribs. It was hard to breathe. All he could think was that he might lose his legs.

“There was no blood in my legs,” he said. “I couldn’t feel them. I couldn’t move. I tried to stay strong. I don’t want to remember. It upsets me.”

Finally, he heard movement: people removing bricks, a bulldozer. He started screaming. His lungs and chest hurt. They called him to shout louder. “I told them I couldn’t.”

Then, through a hole, a beam of light flashed into the darkness. At the sight of him, a rescuer shouted, “What a way to be stuck! It’s worse than a coffin.”

It took another four hours before rescuers pulled him out headfirst through the floor beneath him, covered in dust and soot.

The entire rescue operation took more than 43 hours. The health ministry put the death toll at 45, but the head of civil defense for Sidon, Mohamed Arkadan, said first responders had pulled 73 bodies from the rubble. Five bodies remain undiscovered, he said.

Doctors told al-Baba that his ribs would heal with time.

But not his pain.

He said he would wear black for the rest of his life to mourn his sister. Past conflicts have never prevented him from returning to Lebanon to visit family. This time, it may be a while before he returns.

“There will be no peace,” he said, thinking of his family’s tragedy and the wars in Lebanon and Gaza. “No one will do me justice. None.”