Lebanon local official says 19 killed in Israeli strike on family’s home
At least 19 individuals, including six women and five children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a house in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, according to a local official.
Suad Hammoud informed the BBC that among the deceased were former school principal Ahmed Ezzedine and three generations of his family, all residing in the three-story building in the village of Teffahta.
The village’s imam, Sheikh Abdo Abo Rayya, was also killed while walking near the house during the strike, along with two passers-by, she added.
The Israeli military has not commented on the incident, but it has consistently stated that it takes precautions to minimize harm to civilians.
Over the past four weeks, Israel has conducted thousands of airstrikes across Lebanon, targeting what it claims are operatives, infrastructure, and weaponry associated with the armed group Hezbollah.
Ms. Hammoud stated that the strike in Teffahta occurred after the funeral of Ahmed Ezzedine’s cousin and brother-in-law, Khodr, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the nearby village of Marwanieh on Monday.
However, she refuted a report by the state-run National News Agency (NNA) claiming that the strike targeted a wake for mourners.
“Only the house’s residents were present; they returned after the funeral. There were no outsiders there,” she said. “People understand that the circumstances don’t permit personal condolences, so there are no wakes in the village anymore.”
Inside the house with Mr. Ezzedine were his wife, sister, daughters, daughter-in-law, sons-in-law, and grandchildren. He lived on the ground floor, while his children and their families occupied the upper levels, but everyone is believed to have been on the ground floor when the house was struck.
A video posted on social media showed shortly afterwards showed a huge plume of smoke rising from a hillside in Teffahta where the house was located.
On Wednesday morning, Lebanese TV broadcast footage of a pile of rubble and twisted metal that once made up the upper floors.
The Lebanese health ministry has not reported how many people were killed in the strike. But Ms Hammoud and Teffahta’s community Facebook account put the death toll at 19.
The Facebook account named the five children as Mohammed Yassin, Ahmed and Malak Ezzedine, and Sara and Mohammed Kinyar, and the six women as Zaineb, Malak, Hadiya, Fadiya and Fatima Ezzedine and Zaina Taleb.
Sheikh Abo Rayya was walking near the house at the time of the strike, according to Ms Hammoud.
“The houses in the village aren’t isolated, they’re very close to one another,” she said, adding that another two men identified by the Facebook account as Rabih Younes and Hussein Saleh were also likely to have been passers-by killed by the explosion.
A relative of Sheikh Abo Rayya told the BBC that strike happened at about 17:10 local time, about 15 minutes after the funeral.
They insisted that the sheikh was not the target, noting that the house had been “obliterated”.
“Sheikh Abdo was just passing by the house. He wasn’t inside the house. He was on his way to the mosque with his companion. They were going to prayers,” they said.
“The imam was going down the hill and the pressure wave blew him away. He didn’t die immediately. He was injured and died at the hospital around five hours later.”
Last week, the UN human rights office received reports that 12 women and two children were among 23 people killed in an Israeli air strike on a four-storey residential building in the northern Lebanese town of Aitou.
It called for an investigation into the attack, expressing concerns with respect to international humanitarian law, including the principles of distinction and proportionality.
The Israeli military said it “struck a target belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation”.
Israel’s launched an air campaign and ground invasion against Hezbollah after almost a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the war in Gaza, saying it wanted to ensure the safe return of tens of thousands of residents of Israeli border areas displaced by rocket attacks.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel in support of Palestinians on 8 October 2023, the day after its ally Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel.
More than 2,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since then, including 1,900 in the past five weeks, according to the country’s health ministry. Israeli authorities say 59 people have been killed in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights.
