24 January 2025

Nawal Al-Maghafi

Senior International Investigative Correspondents, BBC World Service

BBC Ashraf and Julia smiles the camera, with a green background. Ashraf has dark hair and beard and wears a dark shirt.BBC

Ashraf (left) persuaded his sister Julia to join him in the family’s apartment, who was believed to be safe from the strikes of the Israeli army

Julia Ramadan was terrified, as the war between Israel and Hezbollah was rising, and she had a nightmare that her family's house was bombed. When she sent a terrified voice message to her brother, she encouraged her to join him in Ain Al -Dalb, a quiet village in southern Lebanon.

He assured her, “The situation is safe here.” “Come stay with us until things calm down.”

Earlier that month, Israel intensified its air campaigns against Hezbollah in Lebanon, in response to the escalation of the missile attacks launched by the Iranian -backed armed group, which led to the killing of civilians, and the displacement of tens of thousands of their homes in northern Israel.

Ashraf was confident that his family's residential building would be a haven, so Julia joined him. But the next day, on September 29, it was subjected to the bloody Israeli attack in this conflict. After the Israeli missiles hit him, the building consisting of an entire six -storey collapsed, killing 73 people.

The Israeli Defense Army says the building was targeted because it was a “terrorist command center” for Hezbollah and that it “led to” the liquidation of “a Hezbollah leaders. She added that the “overwhelming majority” of the dead in the raid “confirmed that they are elements of terrorism.”

But an investigation by the BBCI was achieved from the identity of 68 out of 73 people who were killed in the attack and revealed evidence that only six were related to the military wing of Hezbollah. None of the people we have identified does not have a higher rank. The BBC's global service also found that the other 62 were civilians, 23 of whom were children.

Among the dead are children who are not more than a few months old, such as Noah Qubaisi in the apartment -2 b. In apartment No. (1c), teacher Abeer Hallaq was killed with her husband and three children. Above three floors, Amal Al -Hakawati died with three generations of her family: her husband, children and two granddaughters.

A photographic drawing entitled:

Ashraf and Julia were always close, and they shared everything with each other. “It was like a black box, which carries all my secrets,” he says.

On the afternoon of September 29, the siblings had just returned to their homes after distributing food to the families who fled the fighting. The war has displaced hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon.

Ashraf was taking a shower, Julia was sitting in the living room with their father, and helping him to download a video on social media. And their mother, Jinan, in the kitchen, was cleaning the place.

Then, without warning, they heard a voice that deaf the ears. The entire building was shaken, and a huge cloud of dust and smoke flowed on their apartment.

Ashraf says, “I shouted: Julia! Julia!”

She replied: I am here.

“I looked at my father, who was struggling to get out of the sofa due to a leg injury, and I saw my mother running towards the front door.”

Julia's nightmare was manifested in real life.

“Julia was suffering from hyperactivity, crying very much on the sofa. I was trying to calm her and told her that we needed to go out. Then another attack occurred.”

Video footage of the raid, which was published on the Internet and verified by the BBC, show four Israeli missiles flying in the air towards the building. Seconds, the mass collapses.

Watch the moment of rockets falling on the building, which led to its collapse

Ashraf, with many others, was trapped under the rubble. He started calling, but the only voice he heard was his father's voice, who told him that he could still hear Julia and that she was alive. None of them was able to hear Ashraf's mother.

Ashraf sent a voice message to his friends in the neighborhood to alert them. The next few hours were painful. He could hear the rescuers searching between the debris, and the residents were crying when they discovered their loved ones. “I have been thinking, please, my God, not Julia. I cannot live this life without Julia.”

Ashraf was finally retrieved from the rubble after hours, and he was only minor injuries.

He discovered that his mother had been rescued but died in the hospital. Julia was suffocated under the rubble. His father later told him that Julia's recent words were calls to her brother.

A map showing the target residential building site - shows a small location of its location inside Ain Al -Daled, and a mini -location of Ain Al -Dalb - near Sidon and southern Beirut.

In November, a ceasefire agreement was agreed between Israel and Hezbollah with the aim of ending the conflict. The agreement gives a 60 -day period for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and Hezbollah to withdraw its forces and weapons north of the Litani River. As the deadline approached on January 26, we sought to learn more about the bloody Israeli attack on Lebanon for years.

In the apartment below the Julia and Ashraf apartment, Hawra and Ali Faris were hosting the family members who were displaced by the war. Among them was Batoul, the sister of Hawra, who arrived the previous day, such as Julia, with her husband and young two children. They had fled the intense shelling near the Lebanese -Israeli border, in the areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

“We hesitated about where we will go,” says Batoul. Then I said to my husband: Let's go to Ain al -Daled. My sister said that the building is safe and that they could not hear any nearby bombing.

Batoul's husband, Mohamed Fares, was killed in the Ain Delb attack. A column fell on a bitol and her children. She says no one responded to her calls for help. She finally managed to raise it on her own, but her four -year -old daughter Hawra was crushed fatal. Surprisingly, her daughter escaped an angel.

The pictures were taken to the Faris Hawra family and her cousins, Hassan and Hussein, playing together. Hora wears a pink dress with swollen sleeves and a square neck. Her cousin wears yellow cartoon shirts in the form of dinosaur.Faris family

Hawra, four -year -old with her cousins, were all killed in the attack

Three floors below Batoul, in which Dennis and the religion of the Pope lived. On that Sunday, Dennis invited her brother Hisham for lunch.

Hisham says that the effect of the strike was brutally.

“The second missile hit me on the ground … and the entire wall fell over me.”

He spent seven hours under the rubble.

“I heard a voice from afar. People are talking. Screaming and … cover it. Keep it. Raise the stone. He is still alive. It's a child. Lift this child.” I mean … my God, I said to myself, I am the last to live underground and no one will know about me that I will die here.

When Hisham was finally rescued, he found the fiancée of his nephew awaiting to see if she was alive. He lied to him and told him that she is fine. And they found her body three days later.

Hisham lost four members of his family: his sister, his sister's husband and two children. He told us that he lost his faith and no longer believes in God.

To learn more about who died, we analyzed the data of the Lebanese Ministry of Health, videos and social media publications, in addition to speaking to the survivors of the attack.

In particular, we wanted to investigate the Israeli army's response to the media – immediately after the attack – that the residential building was a Hezbollah command center. We asked the Israeli army several times about what constitutes a command center, but it did not make an explanation.

So we started checking social media, cemeteries, public health records, and funeral videos to determine whether the dead in the attack had any military affiliation with Hezbollah.

We could only find evidence indicating that six of the 68 dead people we identified were related to the military wing of Hezbollah.

Hezbollah's memorials of the six men bearing the title of “Mujahid”, meaning “a fighter”. On the contrary, senior figures are referred to as “Qaid”, that is, “the leader” – and we have not found such names that the group uses to describe the dead.

We asked the Israeli army if the six Hezbollah fighters we set were the intended targets of the raid. She did not answer this question.

A graphic drawing that appears the residential building in Ain al -Dalb, and highlights three apartments that our shareholders live or reside in: the Ramadan family in the 4A apartment, the Faris family in the 3A apartment, and the Pope's family in the apartment -1A apartment

One of the Hezbollah fighters we got to know is Batoul's husband, Mohamed Fares. Batoul told us that her husband, like many other men in southern Lebanon, was a reserve soldier in the group, although she added that he had not received any wages from Hezbollah, or got an official rank, or participated in the fighting.

Israel considers Hezbollah one of its main threats, and Israel, many Western governments and the Arab Gulf states classify the group as a terrorist organization.

But in addition to its great and well -armed military wing, Hezbollah is also an influential political party, as it occupies seats in the Lebanese parliament. In many parts of the country, it is combined into the social fabric, as it provides a network of social services.

In response to our investigation, the Israeli Defense Army said: “The strikes of the Israeli Defense Army on military targets are subject to the provisions of relevant international law, including taking possible precautions, and are implemented after an assessment that the expected side damage and civilian injuries are not excessive in the region.” . Regarding the expected military advantage of the strike.

She had said to the BBC earlier that she had carried out “evacuation procedures” after the raid on Ain Al -Dalb, but everyone who talked to them said that they had not received any warning.

UN experts have raised concerns about The extent of the necessity and necessity of Israeli air strikes on residential buildings In densely populated areas in Lebanon.

This style of targeting the entire buildings – which resulted in great losses among civilians – was a repeated feature of the recent Israeli conflict with Hezbollah, which began when the group escalated its missile attacks in response to the Israeli war in Gaza.

Between October 2023 and November 2024, the Lebanese authorities say more than 3,960 people were killed in Lebanon by Israeli forces, many of whom are civilians. During the same period, the Israeli authorities say that at least 47 civilians were killed by Hezbollah missiles by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon. At least 80 Israeli soldiers were killed during the fighting in southern Lebanon or as a result of missile attacks on northern Israel.

The missile attack on Ain al -Dell is the bloodiest Israeli attack on a building in Lebanon at least 18 years.

Scarlett Parter / BBC the ruins of the residential building in the foreground, and in the background a few residential complexes with different patterns surrounding a mosque. Yellow excavation picks the waste.Scarlett Parter / BBC

Families continued to visit the destruction site after weeks to collect the rubble

The village is still inhabited by its influence. When we visited us, more than a month after the raid, one of the parents continued to visit the site daily, hoping to get news about his 11 -year -old son, whose body was not found yet.

Ashraf Ramadan also returns to scrutinize the rubble, looking for the remaining memories that his family built over the two decades that they lived there.

The door of his wardrobe, who is still decorated with pictures of football players and pop stars who was one day like them. Then he pulls a bear doll from under the rubble and tells me that she was always on his bed.

He says, “Nothing I find here compensates the people we lost.”

Participated in the coverage of Scarlett Barter and Jake Tashi

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