BBC finds IDF attack on Lebanese village, killing most civilians

Julia Ramadan was scared – the war between Israel and Hezbollah was escalating, and she had a nightmare that her home had been bombed. When she sent her brother a panicked voicemail from their apartment in Beirut, he encouraged her to join him in Ain El Derb, a sleepy village in southern Lebanon.

“It’s safe here,” he assured her. “Come stay with us until things calm down.”

Earlier that month, Israel stepped up airstrikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon in response to escalating rocket attacks by the Iran-backed militant group that have killed civilians and displaced tens of thousands of people in northern Israel.

Ashraf believed that their family’s apartment building would become a safe haven, so Julia joined him. But the next day, September 29, it came under the deadliest Israeli attack of the conflict. Hit by an Israeli missile, the entire six-story building collapsed, killing 73 people.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the building was targeted because it was a “terrorist command center” for Hezbollah and that a Hezbollah commander had been “eliminated”. It added that the “vast majority” of those killed in the attack “were confirmed terrorists.”

But a BBC Eye investigation verified the identities of 68 of the 73 people killed in the attack and found evidence that only six had links to Hezbollah’s military wing. None of the people we found appeared to hold senior positions. The BBC World Service also found that a further 62 people were civilians, 23 of whom were children.

Among the dead were babies as young as a few months old, such as Nouh Kobeissi, who lived in apartment 2B. In Apartment -1C, school teacher Abeer Hallak was killed along with her husband and three sons. Amal Hakawati died three floors above with three generations of her family, including her husband, children and two granddaughters.

Ashraf and Julia have always been close and share everything with each other. “She’s like a black box that holds all my secrets,” he said.

On the afternoon of September 29, the brother and sister had just returned home from distributing food to families fleeing the fighting. Hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon have been displaced by the war.

While Ashraf was taking a shower, Julia sat with her father in the living room, helping him upload the video to social media. Their mother, Janan, was cleaning in the kitchen.

Then, without warning, they heard a deafening bang. The entire building shook and a huge cloud of dust and smoke poured into their apartment.

“I shouted, ‘Julia! Julia!'” Ashraf said.

“She responded, ‘I’m here.’

“I looked at my dad, who was struggling to get up from the couch because of his leg injury, and saw my mom running towards the front door.”

Julia’s nightmare plays out in real life.

“Julia was breathing heavily and was crying on the sofa. I tried to calm her down and told her we needed to get out. Then, there was another attack.”

Video of the attack, shared online and verified by the BBC, showed four Israeli missiles flying towards the building from the air. After a few seconds, the block collapsed.

Ashraf and many others were trapped under the rubble. He begins to shout, but the only sound he can hear is that of his father, who tells him that he can still hear Julia’s voice and that she is alive. Neither of them could hear Ashraf’s mother’s voice.

Ashraf sent a voice message to nearby friends to alert them. The next few hours were excruciating. He could hear rescue workers scouring the rubble and residents wailing as they discovered loved ones dead. “I kept thinking, please, God, not Julia. I couldn’t live this life without Julia.”

A few hours later, Ashraf was finally rescued from the rubble with only minor injuries.

He found that his mother had been rescued but died in hospital. Julia suffocated under the rubble. His father later told him that Julia’s last words were calling for her brother.

In November, Israel and Hezbollah reached a ceasefire agreement aimed at ending the conflict. The agreement sets a 60-day deadline for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and Hezbollah’s withdrawal of troops and weapons north of the Litani River. As the January 26 deadline approaches, we try to learn more about the deadliest Israeli attack on Lebanon in years.

In the apartment below Julia and Ashraf’s home, Hala and Ali Fares hosted family members displaced by the war. Among them was Hala’s sister Batur, who, like Julia, had arrived the day before – with her husband and two young children. They fled heavy bombardment in areas near the Lebanese-Israeli border where Hezbollah is strong.

“We were hesitant about where to go,” Batur said. “Then I told my husband, ‘Let’s go to Ain El Derb. My sister said their building was safe and they couldn’t hear any explosions nearby.'”

Batur’s husband, Mohammed Fares, was killed in the Ain El Derb attack. A pillar fell on Batur and her children. She said no one responded to her calls for help. She finally lifted it alone, but her four-year-old daughter Hawala was crushed to death. Miraculously, her baby Malak survived.

Three floors below Batur lived Denis Albaba and Mohyaddin Albaba. That Sunday, Denise invited her brother Hisham over for lunch.

Hisham said the impact of the strike has been brutal.

“The second missile knocked me to the floor… and the whole wall fell on me.”

He spent seven hours under the rubble.

“I heard a sound in the distance. People talking. Screams… ‘Cover her. Move her. Lift the stone. He’s alive. This is a child. Lift this child.’ . ‘I mean… oh my god, I’m thinking, I’m the last one in the depths.’

When Hisham is finally rescued, he finds his niece’s fiancé waiting to see if she is still alive. He lied to him and told him she was fine. They found her body three days later.

Hisham lost four family members – his sister, brother-in-law and their two children. He told us that he had lost his faith and no longer believed in God.

To learn more about the dead, we analyzed data from the Lebanese Ministry of Health, videos, social media posts, and conversations with survivors of the attacks.

In particular, we wanted to ask about the IDF’s response to the media in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the apartment building that had been a Hezbollah command center. We repeatedly asked the IDF about the composition of the command center, but the IDF did not provide clarification.

So we began sifting through social media tributes, cemeteries, public health records and funeral videos to determine whether those killed in the attacks had any military ties to Hezbollah.

We could only find evidence that six of the 68 dead we identified were linked to Hezbollah’s military wing.

Hezbollah’s commemorative photos of the six men used the label “Mujahid,” which means “fighter.” By contrast, senior figures were called “Qaid,” meaning “commander” — and we found that the group did not use such a label to describe those killed.

We asked the IDF whether the six Hezbollah fighters we identified were the intended targets of the attack. It did not respond to the question.

One of the Hezbollah fighters we identified is Batur’s husband, Mohammed Fares. Batur told CNN that her husband, like many other men in southern Lebanon, was a reservist for the group, but she added that he had never been paid by Hezbollah, had not held a formal military rank, and had not fought in combat .

Israel views Hezbollah, which is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, many Western governments and Gulf Arab states, as one of its main threats.

But in addition to its large and well-equipped military, Hezbollah is also an influential party with seats in the Lebanese parliament. In many parts of the country, it is integrated into the fabric of society, providing a network of social services.

In response to our investigation, the IDF said: “IDF strikes against military targets comply with relevant provisions of international law, include taking feasible precautions, and are conducted after an assessment that expected collateral damage and civilian casualties will not be disproportionate.” This strike was associated with anticipated military superiority. “

The company also told the BBC earlier that it had implemented “evacuation procedures” in response to the attack in Ain El Derb, but everyone we spoke to said they had received no warning.

UN experts expressed concern The proportionality and necessity of Israeli air strikes on residential buildings in densely populated areas of Lebanon.

This pattern of targeting entire buildings – causing massive civilian casualties – is a recurring feature of the recent conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which began when Hezbollah upgraded its rockets in response to Israel’s war in Gaza attack.

Lebanese authorities say Israeli forces killed more than 3,960 people in Lebanon between October 2023 and November 2024, many of them civilians. Israeli authorities said at least 47 civilians were killed by Hezbollah rockets fired from southern Lebanon during the same period. At least 80 Israeli soldiers have been killed in fighting in southern Lebanon or as a result of rocket attacks in northern Israel.

The missile strike in Ain Delb was the deadliest Israeli attack on Lebanese buildings in at least 18 years.

The village is still haunted by its effects. When we visited, the strike had been over a month, and one father continued to come to the site every day hoping for news about his 11-year-old son, whose body had not yet been found.

Ashraf Ramadan also returned, sifting through the ruins for memories of the two decades his family had lived there.

He shows me his closet door, which still hangs with photos of football players and pop stars he once admired. He then pulled a teddy bear out of the rubble and told me it had been on his bed.

“Nothing I find here can make up for the people we lost,” he said.

Additional reporting by Scarlett Barth and Jack Tucci