Beirut residents pick through the wreckage of their lives following deadly Israeli strike

Residents worked by the light of their phones the previous night to uncover bodies and search for survivors

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Many residents of the central Beirut neighborhood of Burj Abi Haidar were packing their bags and loading them into their cars on Friday, after an Israeli strike completely destroyed a residential building on their street the previous night, rendering the surrounding buildings uninhabitable.

It was one of two separate Israeli air strikes on central Beirut that struck residential buildings in the adjacent neighborhoods of Burj Abi Haidar and Ras el Nabaa Thursday night, leaving residents stunned at the death toll from what is now the deadliest attack on central Beirut since the war began: at least 22 killed and 117 wounded, according to Lebanon's ministry of health.

The Israeli army gave no warning to residents.

"There's no Hezbollah here. We're all civilians. May god never forgive them for what they've done," an elderly woman told The National as she vacated Burj Abi Haidar, her home of twenty years.

Israeli media reported that Hezbollah security official Wafic Safa, who played a key role in negotiations with Israel during the 2006 war, was the target of the strikes. Reuters reported that he survived the strike, although Hezbollah and the Israeli army have not officially commented.

Rescue operations were still under way at the Burj Abi Haidar site on Friday, as excavation machines dug through the ruins of the collapsed building. Walid Hashash, head of Civil Defense operations in the area, told The National they had recovered 13 bodies at the site.

He said civil defense teams were concerned that the death toll could rise due to the “many displaced people who were staying in the building, and we don’t have a list of how many or who they were”.

As official search operations continued, residents scanned the rubble, attempting to salvage what remained of their belongings. Next door to the collapsed apartment building, a group of siblings picked through the remains of their family-owned business, a candy shop. They poured boxes of dusty chocolates and confections into plastic bags and picked glass out of containers.

A neighbor asked the group's mother, Raghad, if everyone in her family was alright.

“Thank god only Marwa had to go to the hospital," she answered in a tired voice. "She's okay. Ahmad was also hurt but lightly.”

Rescue teams had to stop operations overnight because the structural integrity of the surrounding buildings had been compromised, making it difficult to operate at night, Mr Hashash said. They continued Friday morning.

Residents of Burj Abi Haidar and nearby neighborhoods said that they worked by the light of their phones the previous night to uncover bodies and try to find survivors until Civil Defense teams arrived later.

"I was walking home when the building was hit," said Taha, a 17-year-old student who lives in the nearby neighborhood of Aicha Bakkar. "I ran over to help. When I tell you three-quarters of the people we pulled out of the wreckage were already dead, I'm not exaggerating."

"It was mostly us digging through the wreckage until civil defense teams got here," he told The National. "The scene was horrific."

Another witness said he also helped dig through the remains to find people alive under the building.

“We followed a young man who was screaming that his parents were on the ground floor, so we followed him. When I glanced down, I saw what looked like a mass of hair inside the dust and concrete," the witness said, declining to use his name. "We started digging through the rubble. We dug up a young man. His legs were splayed out, broken. So were his arms and fingers. He’d been completely crushed."

“The guy we followed saw us digging and saw the body we’d dug up. He came close to look at him and then he started wailing: ’That’s my brother, that’s my brother, they killed my brother.'"

The young man had stepped into the rubble and leaned close to inspect his brother's face.

"As we kept digging, it turned out that... he was standing right on top of his dad’s body. His father and his brother were killed right next to each other,” the witness said.

The twin strikes on the adjacent central Beirut neighborhoods of Burj Abi Haidar and Ras al Nabaa are the third such incident in central Beirut in recent weeks, as Israel made clear its priority to "degrade" Hezbollah by launching an extensive aerial assault on various parts of Lebanon and conducting ground invasions in the southern part of the country.

Strikes on the center of the capital, at first rare, have gained frequency, although most are concentrated in Beirut's southern suburbs.

"We targeted a lot in Dahiyeh because that is where lots of the [Hezbollah] leadership was. But they are going to other places and Israel will target them elsewhere too," retired Israeli army Brigadier-General Amir Avivi told The National following the twin strikes on the capital. "When there is an opportunity to strike, they [the Israeli army] do."

The death toll since September 23 has exceeded 1,500, according to Lebanese health authorities. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened Lebanon this week with “destruction” similar to that in Gaza.

"The army will target anywhere," the retired Israeli general said.

Additional reporting by Lizzie Porter in Jerusalem