After seeking safety, displaced Lebanese hit by Israeli airstrike

Zahraa Badreddine lies wrapped up in a white blanket in a hospital bed at the Labib Medical Centre, in Lebanon's coastal city of Sidon, an IV drip at her side.

Badreddine's face is flecked with small wounds, and the tears caught in her thick eyelashes seem to be holding back the weight of her grief.     

She was pulled from the wreckage of an Israeli airstrike that brought down two apartment buildings in the nearby village of Ain el-Delb last Sunday.    

"My eye, my stomach," she said when asked about her injuries. "There are parts of the rocket in my arms and leg."  

But these are not the source of her pain. Her two sons, 13-year-old Ali and nine-year-old Mohamad, were both killed in the attack.

"Ali was beside me," she said, wiping away tears that finally fell. "I see him. How he fell down. How he died. But Mohamad, I did not see, because he was in the building. I didn't see him."  

According to the Lebanese health ministry, more than 1,400 people have been killed and some 7,000 injured since Israel intensified its air assault against what it describes as Hezbollah targets some two weeks ago.  

Adding to Badreddine's tragedy is that she brought her children to Ain el-Delb from the southern city of Nabatieh in an effort to protect them, deciding like hundreds of thousands of others to flee escalating attacks. 

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have since warned residents in dozens of Lebanese towns and villages in the south to move north for their own safety. 

"A lot of bombs [were] around us," said Badreddine. "I thought here was more safe, but it is not. Israel is a killer. It kills kids, women."  

More than one million people have now been displaced in Lebanon, according to the Lebanese government and UN agencies.  

The IDF says it is targeting Hezbollah positions, weapons depots and infrastructure as it seeks to remove the threat of the group's missiles, aimed mainly at northern Israel.  

Hezbollah, the most powerful military force in Lebanon as well as a political and a social movement, has been firing missiles at Israel for almost a year, in solidarity with Hamas militants who attacked Israeli border communities next to Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 and taking 250 hostage, Israeli figures say. 

Israel's subsequent ground invasion of Gaza has killed nearly 42,000, according to Palestinian counts, and decimated the territory.