The smell of burnt rubber hung heavy on rescuers as they dig and laboriously remove the rubble, their shadows long and their movements wild under the blazing floodlights. Bystanders watched in silence as the work progressed, waiting for signs of life beneath a building that had been destroyed by four Israeli missiles in Dahiyeh, Beirut’s southern suburbs, just hours earlier on Friday afternoon.
Bloodstained broken glass was swept aside, the area was sealed off, and members of Hezbollah and the Lebanese Civil Defense shouted orders to allow emergency vehicles into the area. Men wandered around with freshly bandaged hands, the result of pagers planted days earlier, and women sobbed.
“His best friend, his mother, father and three brothers – all are under the rubble. The oldest is 19 and the youngest is two,” said Hassan, 40, a Dahiyeh resident, as he watched the rescue efforts.
Everyone was waiting, hoping to find someone, but fearing they would turn up dead. When word spread that someone had been found, people started running to the rescuers. They were alive, and the ambulance sped off to the hospital, escorted by young men on scooters, honking their horns and cheering.
War with Israel has been going on in the south for almost a year. As Israeli warplanes bombed border villages and more than 100,000 residents fled north, politicians in Beirut called for de-escalation to avoid war, even as it has already begun. But after a week of bloody and relentless attacks, the war is no longer ignorable.
In two waves of attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies suspected to be carried by Israeli forces exploded across the country, killing and wounding Hezbollah members who were carrying them as well as nearby civilians.
An Israeli airstrike destroyed a house in Beirut on Friday, with the Israeli army saying it killed Ibrahim Akil, the leader of Hezbollah’s elite special forces, Radwan, and 10 other men.
By the weekend, 76 people had been killed, including 12 women and children, and more than 3,000 were wounded – more than double the total number of casualties since the war began on October 8 last year.
The sudden and brutal attack shattered any sense of security felt by the Lebanese people.
“For the first time, I feel like war is all around us and that I am no longer safe. I don’t know where the next Israeli attack will be. I avoid gatherings and unfamiliar areas,” said Amal Sherif, a 52-year-old activist who lives in central Beirut.
When Tuesday’s pager attack occurred, she heard screams and the sounds of an ambulance, even though she lives in an area not associated with Hezbollah.
Human rights groups have condemned the pager attacks as indiscriminate, and UN experts have called them “horrific” violations of international law. “Such attacks violate the right to life and may amount to the war crimes of murder, attacks against civilians and indiscriminate attacks,” the UN human rights experts said in a statement.
“This new phase of actions will continue until our goal of the safe return of the northern population is achieved,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said shortly after Friday’s Beirut airstrikes. He announced earlier last week that the Israeli military’s “center of gravity” was shifting toward confronting Hezbollah in northern Israel.
Israeli drones patrolled the skies over Beirut late into the night on Friday, the sound of their engines echoing across the capital for the first time since the war began.
Residents in the south call the Israeli MK drones “um Kamal,” likening them to nosy neighbors always prying about; in Gaza they are called “hornets” because of the buzzing sound they make. Beirut residents, who have yet to acquire the vocabulary or dark humor necessary to call them anything other than their actual names, remain astonished by the presence of drones flying over their homes.
Sherif said he closed his windows on Friday to block out the noise and get some sleep.
In hospitals across Lebanon, hundreds of patients were trying to adapt to their new lives, many of whom were left permanently disabled. Many were left blind or had lost a hand after the pager explosion. The pager beeped twice and then paused, giving people enough time to hold it close to their face before it exploded.
“Enucleation is a rare operation these days. One of our senior ophthalmologists said he performed more enucleations in one day than he had in his entire career,” Lebanon’s Health Minister Firas Abiad told the Observer. Sami Rizk, CEO of Beirut’s LAU Medical Center Rizk Hospital, said they would ask other countries to donate artificial eyes.
The attacks have prompted unity across Lebanon, which has been divided over the past year over the war between Hezbollah and Israel, with some arguing a ceasefire in Gaza must be enforced and others angry that Lebanon has been drawn into the conflict.
Hezbollah was the first to fire on Israel on October 8, claiming it was an act of “solidarity” after a Hamas attack the previous day.
Since then, Lebanese groups have continued to insist that they will not stop their attacks on northern Israel until a ceasefire is reached in Gaza. The fighting has left more than 500 people dead in Lebanon, over 200 of them civilians, and destroyed entire villages along the Lebanese-Israeli border.
After the pager explosion, Hezbollah’s criticism of the war against Israel stopped. People lined up outside the hospital to donate blood. Officials said that because so many citizens had volunteered, there was no need for kidney donations and eye transplants were not possible.
“Israel is attacking us. It’s no longer an attack against Hezbollah, it’s an attack against civilians. Even if we are against Hezbollah, if Israel attacks Lebanon, our people will stand shoulder to shoulder with each other,” Sherif said.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, in a speech on Thursday, thanked the Lebanese people for their unity and said this week’s attacks were a “declaration of war” on Lebanon. He vowed that Hezbollah would retaliate against Israel.
“It’s clear that solidarity is growing stronger every day,” said Qassam Kassir, an analyst close to Hezbollah. Whether support for Hezbollah continues or fades as the shock of the pager attacks wears off will depend largely on how the group retaliates against Israel.
“The reality is that Hezbollah faces a big challenge: How can it deal with Israel without going to war? That’s the central question,” Kassir said.