'We haven’t caught a break': Rescue workers dig as Dahiyeh residents await news of missing loved ones

Israel carried out a strike on a residential building in a highly populated area of southern Beirut, killing senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil and numerous others

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Dozens of family members of the missing gathered near an area roped off by the Lebanese army late on Friday night, waiting for news of loved ones believed to be trapped under the rubble after an Israeli missile attack on a residential building in Beirut’s suburb of Dahiyeh.

The strike killed senior Hezbollah official Ibrahim Aqil and numerous other commanders that were meeting underground beneath the building, the group acknowledged in an overnight statement.

As rescue efforts continued, the death toll rose to 14, with more than 60 wounded. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said the number was expected to rise as paramedics worked well into the night.

A teary-eyed woman in a black hijab asked Red Cross workers for news of her daughter.

“I went to St George hospital and St Therese and no one knows where my daughter is. There has to be some way you can find out,” she told the group of paramedics. “Where is my daughter?”

“There’s nothing we can do in these cases because most of the time we don’t know if the person who was retrieved is alive or has died, or is still under the rubble, or what hospital they went to,” a civil defence medic, who identified himself only as Hassan, told The National.

The medic said he had been working at the rescue site for hours.

“I helped get the very first living person out from under the rubble,” he said, adding: “We pulled his wife out, too … But she was already dead.”

By Hassan’s assessment, many people may still be trapped under the rubble of what was once a 10-storey apartment building.

The exhausted medic said he had been running on adrenalin for four days, starting when communication devices, typically used by Hezbollah members to bypass Israeli interception, simultaneously exploded across Lebanon in an unprecedented operation attributed to Israel’s Mossad agency.

“This is a difficult time for Lebanon. For all of us. We haven’t caught a break,” he said, sipping coffee with other colleagues inside an ambulance.

Near the vehicle, dazed residents and other rescue workers sat in a restaurant, seeking a brief moment of respite.

Dahiyeh residents, some covered in blood or swathed in bandages, sat in plastic chairs near the security cordon. Others, some of them sobbing, paced up and down the street, caressing worry beads.

They stepped over shattered glass mixed with blood that was gathered into a pile on the pavement.

At times, the crowd grew agitated as rescuers carrying stretchers rushed into the closed-off area.

Hassan said he had been waiting hours to know whether his relatives – including four children under 10 years old – survived.

“I called them as soon as I heard the news,” he told The National, his eyes reddened by exhaustion. “They never answered.”

He condemned the Israeli strike attack as a “war crime”.

“These are civilians paying the price,” he said.

“This is not a battlefield. This building houses families, women, and children. This is not a fair war. Only our faith makes it bearable to pay this price.”

A resident told The National defiantly that “victory will come”. He was waiting to see if his son's friend would be found under the rubble. The whole family is missing.

The children are between two and 19 years old.