As the war in the Middle East entered a terrifying new phase this week, with the Israeli Air Force launching bombing raids on the Lebanese capital Beirut, the Mail’s Middle East correspondent CHARLIE FAULKNER was at the heart of the action. Here is her gripping diary of eight days in a living hell…
Friday, September 27
The flight from London landed in Beirut at 7.30pm on Friday. After hitting the Tarmac, the moment I switched off my phone’s flight mode, I was deluged with messages and updates.
‘IDF targeted [Hassan] Nasrallah. Not clear if they got him yet. Welcome to Lebanon,’ came a message from a colleague.
Still trying to understand the implications of the strike I messaged a Lebanese friend in Beirut.
‘Landed. Are you okay?’ I said.
‘Yes. They hit Dahieh [the suburb where Hezbollah had established its base] bad. I saw it,’ he said.
This was big. My Lebanese colleague and I hit the ground running. The updates were non-stop. The questions and the predictions. The analysis of Hezbollah’s behaviour and whether it meant the terror group’s leader was actually dead. If he was, it would be a huge turning point in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that has plagued Lebanon for the last 12 months.
The Mail’s Middle East correspondent Charlie Faulkner has been at the heart of the action over the past week
Smoke rises amid flames following an airstrike targeting a neighborhood in Beirut’s southern suburb
The waterfront promenade of Corniche Beirut is thronged with people who have nowhere to go
Saturday
More than one million people have been displaced because of the escalation in the south. The idyllic waterfront promenade of Corniche Beirut, lined with palm trees, is now thronged with people who have nowhere to go.
Families sleep on thin mattresses or inside cars, exhausted friends sit together, many seeking out the shade of a palm tree to avoid the heat of the day.
We met Nada, 46, and her family. They had already fled the bloody onslaught once – moving up to Beirut from their home in Nabatieh, less than 40 miles from the Israeli border, a week ago.
Last night, they were forced to flee once more when evacuation warnings were issued by Israel.
‘We’re hungry, we’re horrified, tired, scared,’ said Nada. ‘Poor people like us who don’t have money, what do we do? We can’t even go to the bathroom. We know we have a long road ahead, we’re desperate. We don’t have hope any more. We’re totally terrified of more missiles.’
When rumours of Nasrallah’s death were confirmed, the news was met with disbelief by supporters and opponents alike. Screams of grief rang throughout the city and gunfire echoed off the walls of buildings.
Sunday
It’s a very different scene at Beirut’s Marina, where people with the wherewithal to pay are fleeing the conflict on luxury yachts.
The skipper in charge of the operation used to offer trips on party boats but things started to change a few months ago when the airport first shut down for a few hours during an Iranian missile strike on Israel.
His boss saw an opportunity and, with the airport closed, took to TikTok to promote his boat trips to safety. In the last couple of weeks his phone hasn’t stopped ringing with calls and messages from people desperate to get out.
When we visited the site of a missile strike later in the day in the south of Beirut, panicked people were fleeing in cars filled with belongings – including mattresses in anticipation of having to sleep on the streets.
Scores more evacuating the area on mopeds. ‘Don’t film, we’re all drug dealers,’ yelled one guy on a bike with a big smile while balancing a fan between his legs. ‘Do you want some? I’ve got some.’
Displaced families bring along mattresses in anticipation of having to sleep on the streets
A man walks past the rubble of a building destroyed following Israeli strikes in Dahieh
Monday
Overnight the Israelis struck the centre of Beirut for the first time during this conflict, killing four people, one of whom was a civilian.
‘The doors were shaking, my main closet was shaking. It felt similar to when we had an earthquake last year,’ said Amer Tabsh, 45, co-owner of residential property neighbouring the building that was hit. ‘I immediately checked on my wife and son, checked the home for damage. I could smell a really strong smell of acrid burning and the street was hidden by thick, dark grey smoke.’
‘We’d had Israeli drones overhead for the previous 48 hours and in the last day they were really close. The buzzing sound was really bothering us because it was so loud, which meant it was very close, maybe filming the area.’
In fact, his 14-year-old son had been urging his dad to leave the building on Sunday. ‘He’s a gamer so he knows what the drone overhead means,’ said Tabsh. ‘He was telling me that we should leave the house all day yesterday. I was reassuring him that the area was safe. The strike has really affected him. He’s in shock.’
Tuesday
We head to Saida, a city 27 miles south of Beirut, where a residential building had been completely flattened by an Israeli strike on Sunday. Just a few days earlier, many families who had fled the Israeli bombardment in the south had believed they had found safety here.
They were still searching for two missing children in the rubble. An eight-year-old girl named Zahra, who I meet at the hospital, told me that as she played in the building’s garden, she had finally felt safe after enduring months of bombardments. Then the missiles hit.
At the same hospital, a badly injured man sat outside. He had what looked like deep purple veins running across his face like tree roots. They were, in fact, lacerations that were still in the process of healing.
His hand was bandaged in a way that suggested there wasn’t much of it left and two of his fingers were also wrapped up. This man, who didn’t give his name and could barely speak because his face was so badly swollen, was a victim of the pager and radio blasts two weeks ago. He clearly still had a long convalescence ahead.
We had a close call on the way back to Beirut. A building overlooking the highway had just been hit by an Israeli strike. If we had arrived a few moments earlier, who knows what would have happened to us?
The debris from the building had tumbled on to the road, smashing the metal barricades and spraying the pavement with a layer of glass shards. We heard them crunch as the car tyres passed over them.
Wednesday
Columns of thick smoke rose throughout Southern Lebanon’s undulating green hills overlooking the Mediterranean. Israeli airstrikes have been gradually moving deeper into Lebanon.
Nearly 30 villages south of the Litani River – 18 miles north of the Israeli border – were issued evacuation notices by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) this morning ahead of further strikes, effectively making it a no-go area and cutting off the city of Tyre.
‘We can’t get in or out of Tyre at the moment, it’s too dangerous in the surrounding villages. There are strikes every hour,’ Lebanese journalist Nabil Mamlouk told me.
In the Christian town of Jezzine, approximately 43 miles north east of Tyre and above the Litani River, a woman in her sixties called Marie, told me she was very worried about the nearby strikes.
‘I hear the bombing at night time. It’s scary that the IDF have crossed the border into Lebanon. I’m afraid they will stay here and then it will lead to another war to kick them out,’ said the retired teacher.
Hundreds of people from surrounding villages have poured into the Jezzine district seeking refuge from the Israeli bombardment in the last ten days. Khalil Harfouche, Jezzine’s head of the municipality and mayor, told me they discovered some 1,000 people on the streets on the first day of the surge north. The district is now operating a total of 20 public shelters.
‘My information is that Christian areas are safe unless we have Hezbollah militants and so far, so good. It’s very difficult to know but the intelligence officer responsible for this area assured me they’re making sure there is no one here.’
Thursday
Every night there are bomb blasts throughout Beirut, shaking the city and spreading fear. One of the 17 strikes that hit the capital last night landed particularly close to where I am staying, just half a mile away.
It was targeting a Hezbollah-affiliated Civil Defence office, killing at least seven paramedics. In the last three days alone, some 40 rescue workers have been killed by Israeli fire, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported today. That’s 40 per cent of all the rescue workers who’ve been killed since October 7.
News also started to flood in that some journalists had been injured in the course of trying to cover the strike. Tensions are incredibly high at the moment and many people here are feeling paranoid and on edge, suspicious of the abnormal and angry at what is happening to their country.
Friday
It’s been a week since the huge strike that took out Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and I’ve just woken up to the news that Beirut was rocked by another tremendous strike overnight, this time targeting his successor Hashem Safieddine. There are reports of a meeting between some of the leadership in an underground bunker. We’re all waiting to see if the strike was successful.
