A sudden Israeli bombing, then a Beirut family’s scramble for safety

It was a regular evening at the Merhis’ home. Then a bomb ripped through their building, turning everything lethal.

Beirut, Lebanon – On the evening of October 10, the Merhis were all at home.

Mahdi sat in the living room while his wife prepared pasta for dinner in the kitchen. Their eldest son, Mustapha, 23, was home from his job as a chef and sat in the one “kids” bedroom with his three sisters.

The Merhi family called this two-bedroom flat in Beirut’s Basta Fawqa neighbourhood home for the previous 18 months. They had moved here to be closer to their eldest daughter’s university.

But shortly after 7pm that night, a year and a half of building a home was lost in an instant.

Mustapha spoke to Al Jazeera 17 days later, standing desolately in the wreckage of his family’s home.