Deir al-Zour, Syria — A Syrian man buried his wife and four of his five children on Saturday huge wave of israeli attacks The attacks on Beirut earlier this week brought them to rest in the Deir al-Zour province in northeastern Syria.
This was not the homecoming they expected when they fled Lebanon six years ago.
The bodies, along with those of his six-months-pregnant daughter-in-law, arrived on a bus from Lebanon in wooden coffins with their names written on the sides. People stood crying near a bus ahead of a burial procession in the city of al-Sour as mourners gathered to express their condolences.
The remains of one of his two daughters are still missing, believed to be buried under debris, as search operations ended on Saturday, three days after the attacks.
This strike was one of approximately 100 Israel carried out what it said were strikes without warning on Wednesday, targeting Hezbollah-linked sites in Beirut and other parts of Lebanon. More than 350 people were killed that day, a third of whom were women and children, making it the deadliest day in the nearly six-week war.
Many of the attacks took place away from conflict zones, on commercial streets and densely populated areas in central Beirut, where repeated Israeli evacuation warnings have been issued since March 2, when the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel in response to US-Israeli attacks on Iran.
The father, Hamad al-Jalib, survived because he was carrying a gas canister while working as the building’s concierge. When he heard there had been an attack in the Ain Marisse neighbourhood, where he lives, he ran back only to see plumes of smoke rising from a building behind a mosque across Beirut’s famous seaside promenade – usually crowded with people walking and exercising.
“The Israeli attack killed my girls, they are innocent, just sitting at home,” al-Jalib said. “They were having lunch.”
He said it took three days for rescue teams to pull out his family’s bodies from the debris. “And one of my daughters is still missing, her name is Fatima Hamad al-Jalib.” she is 10 years old. His second daughter was 12 years old while his sons were 17, 14 and 13 years old.
Three other Syrian relatives were also killed in the Ain Marisse attack and were buried on Saturday in the town of al-Shuhail in Deir al-Zour, after the family was split upon returning to Syria.
Al-Jalib said his family was displaced from their area and moved to Lebanon in 2020, as local tensions rose between tribal groups and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
Casualties from Wednesday’s attacks and other attacks across the country have brought the death toll in Israel’s more than a month-long war with Hezbollah to more than 1,950 and more than 6,300 injured, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. The death toll includes at least 315 Syrians killed and injured.
It is unclear how many of those killed on Wednesday were non-Lebanese, as the health ministry did not provide a breakdown by nationality. Officials have said that at least 39 Syrians are among the dead.
UN refugee agency spokesman Dalal Harb said the family killed in Ain Marisse was not registered with the UNHCR. There are approximately 530,000 Syrian refugees registered with the UNHCR in Lebanon, with hundreds of thousands more believed to be unregistered.
Whereas Millions of Syrians have returned Many others from Lebanon are reluctant to return due to a lack of jobs and ongoing violence since the ouster of former Syrian President Bashar Assad from power in December 2024.
Al-Jalib’s brother, Jomaa, who also lived in Lebanon, said he was at work about 150 meters (500 feet) away when the first explosion occurred. “We ran and we ran, then there was another attack.” He said he was approaching the building as it started collapsing. “It was too late to get anyone out. We shouted for them, but no one responded.”
He said ambulances later recovered the bodies, which they identified at a hospital.
After the burials on Saturday, people stood shoulder to shoulder in prayer over fresh graves.
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Associated Press writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.
