The outbreak of conflict has had a devastating human rights impact on millions across the Middle East, affecting civilians in at least 12 countries. More than 5,000 people have been killed, tens of thousands injured, and millions displaced across the region.
In Lebanon, at least 2,567 people have been killed, including 103 healthcare workers. Despite a fragile ceasefire, attacks there have continued in recent days. Israeli forces retain control of land in southern Lebanon and are deliberately destroying civilian infrastructure and homes there.
Bissan Fakih, MENA Campaigner at Amnesty International, describes her first trip to her family home in southern Lebanon amidst the shaky ceasefire.
I was relieved when we crossed the makeshift bridge at Qasmiye. It was hastily constructed after Israeli air strikes destroyed it, but easy to drive on. It also meant I was approaching home. Bridges over the Litani River, connecting southern Lebanon to rest of the country, had been blown up one after the other in Israeli air strikes.
With the 10-day ceasefire of the Israel-Hezbollah war set to expire, I had decided to drive to the southern coastal city of Tyre, to check on my family home and check on the city in case it was going to be bombed again.
Rescue workers still searching for bodies
I arrived at the site of an Israeli air strike, on a usually bustling street on Tyre’s waterfront. The strike came only a few minutes before the ceasefire took effect at midnight on 17 April. I imagine the people in those buildings had thought they survived the war. Rescue workers were still looking for bodies. They said 26 people had been killed in the attack.
A man at the site told me there was one person still beneath the rubble. He pointed at a weary looking rescue worker from the Risala Scouts – a civil defence organization – who was directing the search now on its fifth day and said he could answer my questions. I said a few words of respect given all that he and his colleagues had been through. Dozens of healthcare workers and first responders in Lebanon have been killed in Israeli air strikes since 2 March 2026 yet they continued to run into danger to save lives.
A man speaking to a reporter nearby pointed to a set of tattooed lines on his right arm. He pointed line by line yelling “gone!” at each one. They were the names of his family members. “Only this one remains… They are not Hezbollah, where is Hezbollah?”
Most cars and motorcycles I passed had the photos of people killed in the fighting plastered on them. In the few hours I was there, there were three funerals. All of Tyre felt like one big funeral, and I guessed all of southern Lebanon did. In a village a short drive away, journalist Amal Khalil was being laid to rest after being killed in Israeli air strikes the previous day, despite the so-called ceasefire.
Close by, a temporary burial site used in the 2024 war, had rows of freshly dug numbered graves for people who couldn’t be buried in their ancestral villages because Israeli soldiers are still holding them as part of a ‘security zone’.
Despite the rubble around us, Tyre, either oblivious or out of a mothering kindness, was in her full April glory, all blue skies and clear blue water and swaying palm trees.
Home
My grandma has been gone for many years, but the house still smelled of her when I opened the door. No one was there – my family was displaced to my home in Beirut. They were among more than one million people who have been displaced since 2 March by the Israeli military’s overly broad mass evacuation orders.
I almost jumped out of my skin at the sound of a nearby explosion, automatically thinking it was an air strike. I realized then that it was likely the Israelis detonating homes in nearby villages. Relief followed by anguish. The so-called security zone Israel is holding several kilometres into Lebanon, and the Israeli army has been destroying civilian infrastructure and blowing up homes in the area.
The ceasefire was still holding in our neighbourhood, but I was tense being in an empty building and I worked quickly.
I packed a huge bag of loose photographs. I had made it my winter holiday project to organize our family photos into albums and move them to my home in Beirut, fearing they could get destroyed in another round of fighting, but I hadn’t gotten through them all. I also grabbed some warm weather clothes for my grandpa since the weather had changed during his displacement and some cake stands of my mom’s I’d been eyeing without the temerity to ask for or take, before locking up the house.
I kissed the door frame before I left and said a prayer for the house’s protection; I asked it to stay, to wait for our return. And then I superstitiously regretted it – I had always walked out of this house nonchalantly. Perhaps I jinxed it by giving the goodbye so much meaning.
Living through the war we are documenting
Everyone on the Amnesty International team in Beirut has been affected in one way or another. Some of us are hosting displaced people; others have themselves been displaced. The researchers and campaigners covering violations in Lebanon are living through the war they are documenting.
Days like Black Wednesday, on 8 April, when Israeli forces killed more than 357 people in air strikes across Lebanon including in crowded civilian areas in Beirut, came frighteningly close to our homes and our office.
As we hear air strikes and worry about our own safety and that of our families, we also worry about the safety of the people whose cases we work on across the region, and we continue that work.
Despite the fragile ceasefire, the worry and grief have not eased. The destruction of homes and the killing of civilians in southern Lebanon, including of first responders, continues. Israeli surveillance drones circle overhead in Beirut too – a nauseating reminder that death from above could revisit our homes and places of refuge at any time.
My family is eager to go home, to be on our balcony, see our neighbours and enjoy the scents and comfort of the south. That cannot happen until we have a real, enduring ceasefire and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon.
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The post ‘I said a prayer for the house’s protection; I asked it to stay, to wait for our return’: Notes from a trip to southern Lebanon appeared first on Amnesty International.