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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 on hand. the center of the action. Here is his exciting diary of eight days in hell…
Friday, September 27
The flight from London landed in Beirut at 7:30 p.m. on Friday. After arriving in Tarmac, the moment I turned off my phone’s airplane mode, I was inundated with messages and updates.
‘The IDF attacked (Hassan) Nasrallah. It’s unclear if he’s been caught yet. Welcome to Lebanon,’ was the message from a colleague.
Still trying to understand the implications of the attack, I messaged a Lebanese friend in Beirut.
‘Landed. Are you OK?’ I said.
‘Yeah. They badly hit Dahieh (the suburb where Hezbollah had established its base). I saw it,’ he said.
This was great. My Lebanese colleague and I got to work. The updates were continuous. The questions and predictions. Analysis of Hezbollah’s behavior and whether it meant the terrorist group’s leader was really dead. If it were, it would be a huge turning point in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that has plagued Lebanon for the past 12 months.
The Mail’s Middle East correspondent Charlie Faulkner has been at the center of the action over the past week.
Smoke rises amid flames after an airstrike targeted a neighborhood in the southern suburb of Beirut.
The Corniche Beirut promenade is crowded with people who have nowhere to go
Saturday
More than a million people have been displaced by the escalation in the south. The idyllic, palm-fringed Corniche Beirut promenade is now packed with people with nowhere to go.
Families sleep on thin mattresses or inside cars, exhausted friends sit together and many seek the shade of a palm tree to avoid the heat of the day.
We met Nada, 46, and his family. They had already fled the bloody attack once: they moved 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 again when Israel issued evacuation warnings.
“We’re hungry, we’re horrified, we’re tired, we’re scared,” Nada said. ‘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 are desperate. We no longer have hope. “We are totally terrified by the idea of more missiles.”
When rumors of Nasrallah’s death were confirmed, both supporters and opponents greeted the news with disbelief. Screams of pain echoed throughout the city and gunshots echoed off the walls of the buildings.
Sunday
It’s a very different scene at Beirut’s marina, where people with the means to pay are fleeing the conflict on luxury yachts.
The captain 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 closed for a few hours during an Iranian missile attack on Israel.
His boss saw an opportunity and, with the airport closed, took to TikTok to promote his boat trips to safety. In recent weeks his phone has not stopped ringing with calls and messages from people desperate to get out.
When we visited the site of a missile attack later that day in southern Beirut, terrified people were fleeing in cars packed with belongings, including mattresses, in anticipation of having to sleep on the streets.
Much more evacuating the area by moped. “Don’t film, we’re all drug dealers,” shouted a guy on a bicycle with a big smile while holding a fan between his legs. ‘Do you want some? I have some.’
Displaced families bring mattresses before having to sleep on the streets.
A man walks through the rubble of a building destroyed after the Israeli attacks in Dahieh.
Monday
During the night, the Israelis attacked central Beirut for the first time during this conflict, killing four people, one of whom was a civilian.
‘The doors were shaking, my master closet was shaking. It felt similar to when we had an earthquake last year,” said Amer Tabsh, 45, co-owner of a residential property neighboring the building that was hit. ‘I immediately checked on my wife and son and checked the house for damage.’ .I could smell a very strong burning smell and the street was obscured by thick, dark gray smoke.’
‘We had had Israeli drones flying overhead for the previous 48 hours and on the last day they came very close. “The humming noise bothered us a lot because it was very loud, which meant it was very close, perhaps filming the area.”
In fact, his 14-year-old son had been urging his father to leave the building on Sunday. “He’s a gamer, so he knows what the drone overhead means,” Tabsh said. ‘Yesterday he was telling me that we should leave the house all day. I was assuring him that the area was safe. The strike has affected him greatly. He’s in shock.’
Tuesday
We headed to Saida, a city 44 kilometers south of Beirut, where a residential building had been completely leveled by an Israeli attack on Sunday. Just a few days earlier, many families who had fled Israeli bombing in the south believed they had found safety here.
They were still searching through the rubble for two missing children. An eight-year-old girl named Zahra, whom I met at the hospital, told me that while playing in the building’s garden, she had finally felt safe after enduring months of bombing. Then the missiles hit.
At the same hospital, a seriously injured man was sitting outside. He had what looked like dark purple veins running down his face like tree roots. They were, in reality, lacerations that were still in the process of healing.
His hand was bandaged in a way that suggested he didn’t have much left and two of his fingers were also wrapped. This man, who did not give his name and could barely speak because his face was so swollen, was a victim of the radio and pager explosions two weeks ago. It was evident that a long convalescence still awaited him.
We nearly lost our balance on the way back to Beirut. A building facing the highway had just been hit by an Israeli attack. If we had arrived a few moments earlier, who knows what would have happened to us?
Debris from the building had fallen onto the road, breaking metal barricades and spattering the pavement with a layer of glass shards. We heard them crunch as the car tires ran over them.
Wednesday
Plumes of thick smoke rose along the rolling green hills of southern Lebanon overlooking the Mediterranean. Israeli airstrikes have gradually moved deeper into Lebanon.
Nearly 30 villages south of the Litani River – 18 miles north of the Israeli border – were given evacuation notices by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) this morning ahead of new attacks, effectively turning them into a no-go area and isolating the tire city.
‘We cannot enter or leave Tire at the moment, it is too dangerous in the surrounding towns. There are strikes every hour,” Lebanese journalist Nabil Mamlouk told me.
In the Christian town of Jezzine, about 43 miles northeast of Tire and on the Litani River, a woman in her sixties named Marie told me she was very concerned about nearby attacks.
‘I hear the bombing at night. It is scary that the IDF has crossed the border into Lebanon. I am afraid that they will stay here and then there will be another war to expel them,” said the retired professor.
Hundreds of people from surrounding villages have arrived in the Jezzine district seeking refuge from the Israeli bombardment of the past ten days. Khalil Harfouche, municipal chief and mayor of Jezzine, told me that they discovered about 1,000 people in the streets on the first day of the northward surge. The district now operates a total of 20 public shelters.
‘My information is that Christian areas are safe unless we have Hezbollah militants and so far everything is going well. It’s very difficult to know, but the intelligence officer responsible for this area assured me that they are making sure that no one is here.
Thursday
Every night there are bomb explosions throughout Beirut, shaking the city and spreading fear. One of the 17 attacks that hit the capital last night fell particularly close to where I am staying, just half a mile away.
He targeted a Hezbollah-affiliated Civil Defense office and killed at least seven paramedics. In the last three days alone, some 40 rescue workers have been killed by Israeli fire, the Lebanese Ministry of Health reported today. That’s 40 percent of all rescue workers who have died since October 7.
News also began to arrive that some journalists had been injured while trying to cover the strike. Tensions are incredibly high right now and many people here are feeling paranoid and on edge, suspicious of the abnormal and angry about what is happening to their country.
Friday
It’s been a week since the massive attack that took down Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and I just woke up to the news that Beirut was rocked by another tremendous attack overnight, this time targeting his successor Hashem Safieddine. There are reports of a meeting between some leaders in an underground bunker. We are all waiting to see if the strike was successful.