Aitou, Lebanon: The pair go about their grisly work in silence, unflustered by the crowd of military men, politicians and other onlookers gathered around them. Two young Red Cross workers in fluoro orange vests and purple medical gloves lay down a black sheet of fabric tenderly on the ground, as if it was a picnic blanket.
Opening the door of a bombed-out ute, its windows shattered into shards, they lift out the remains of a tiny baby and place it on the body bag. Paramedics identified 22 people killed here the previous day after an Israeli airstrike hit a home in this mountain village in northern Lebanon. Among them was a toddler. Eight others were wounded. Soon after we arrive at the site, another victim is discovered: a child, less than a year old, according to officials at the scene.
Red Cross members recover the remains of a baby at the site of the strike in the village of Aitou in northern Lebanon.Credit: Kate Geraghty
No one knows exactly how the baby made it into the ute. The theory of those overseeing the recovery effort: the child was hurled in there by the force of the blast. The Red Cross workers carry out their duties methodically, but when they pause for a break, the female paramedic’s eyes begin to well up. It’s a distressing scene and it is tempting to look away. To do so would be to avert our gaze from the rising human cost of the war between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah, which has killed more than 1300 people in Lebanon since September. The United Nations is calling for an investigation into whether the Israeli strike in Aitou amounts to a war crime.
Perched high on the majestic slopes of Mount Lebanon, Aitou is far from the predominantly Shiite Muslim Hezbollah strongholds that have come under intense Israeli bombardments over the past three weeks. It is also a proud Maronite Christian community. At the entry to the cluster of homes where the Alwan family has lived for generations we are greeted by a statue of Saint Rafqa, a Lebanese Maronite nun canonised in 2001. When we visited nearby towns just a few days earlier, several Lebanese-Australians told us they felt removed from the threat of war and had no intention of leaving the country on government-funded evacuation flights.
“We are peaceful people, we have no problem with anyone,” says Tony Alwan, who lives next door to the targeted building and is the nephew of its owner. He was playing video games in his bedroom when he heard the bomb blast and felt the building shake. “I heard the screams of the injured. Very bad sounds,” he says, his sentence trailing off as Israeli jets fly above us in the sky. His grandmother was taken to hospital with a broken leg, the only relative injured in the strike.
The Hijazi family was not so fortunate. They fled north when their home in Aitaroun, a town in southern Lebanon near the border with Israel, became unlivable. At the suggestion of relatives living in Australia, Tony Alwan’s uncle Elie rented his three-storey home to them while staying elsewhere during the war. It was a way to make some money while providing the displaced with somewhere to live. It turned out to be a fateful decision. The number of occupants in the house soon swelled from six to more than 20, as more displaced relatives sought refuge there.
Conflicting accounts are still swirling about exactly why Israel launched the strike. According to Elie Alwan, on Tuesday afternoon the Hijazi family was visited by a man believed to be a Hezbollah official. He says the official was going to houses around the area, collecting statistics and delivering cash to those displaced by the war. During our visit, Lebanese investigators pull out wads of Lebanese pounds from the car of the Hezbollah official. It appears the Israeli military was tracking his movements closely: soon after he arrived in Aitou, a bomb flattened the home, killing almost everyone inside.
“I can’t comprehend what happened. I lost everything I own,” Elie Alwan says. He is eager to correct reports that he rented the house to a Hezbollah official, insisting his only tenants were the Hijazi family. The Israel Defence Forces have not commented on the strike.
Locals from the area help the search for remains, using twigs to pick up charred strips of flesh. From a pile of rubble, paramedics pull out a foot and place it in a black bag. Some onlookers clutch their noses, trying to avoid the rancid smell of death. An earthmover, plastered with a decal of the Virgin Mary, sifts through the ruins, making sure to avoid a statue of the beloved Maronite monk Saint Charbel that somehow survived the blast intact.
Speaking about the strike in Geneva, United Nations Human Rights spokesman Jeremy Laurence was concerned about whether it complied with the “laws of war, and the principles of distinction proportion and proportionality”.
“Our office calls for a prompt, independent, and thorough investigation into this incident,” he said, noting it killed at least a dozen women and children.
Israel says its attacks against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon are necessary to force the group, a listed terror organisation in Australia, US and EU, back from its border and to allow 60,000 Israelis to return safely to their homes.
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Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets into Israel for the past year, says it’s acting in solidarity with Palestinians fighting against Israel in Gaza. Four Israeli soldiers were killed and 58 injured in a Hezbollah drone strike this week near Haifa in northern Israel, and the group has vowed to continue pushing deeper into Israel with its attacks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his nation would “continue to hit Hezbollah mercilessly in all parts of Lebanon”, rebuffing international calls for a ceasefire.
A day after the strike, Tony Alwan says it still feels like a bad dream that the war reached his sleepy village in the mountains. He looks baffled when told some people have declined an offer of a free flight out of Lebanon. “If I could go to Australia,” he says, “I would in one minute.”
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