DEIR EL-ZOUR, Syria – A Syrian father on Saturday laid to rest his wife and four of his five children, victims of the devastating Israeli airstrikes that struck Beirut earlier this week. The solemn burial took place in the Deir el-Zour province in northeastern Syria.
This tragic event was far from the return home they had hoped for when they sought refuge in Lebanon six years ago.
The family members’ bodies, along with that of his six-month pregnant daughter-in-law, arrived from Lebanon in wooden coffins, each marked with their names. As the coffins were unloaded in the town of al-Sour, men wept openly beside the bus, and mourners gathered to express their condolences during the somber procession.
Tragically, one of his daughters remains missing, presumed buried under rubble after search operations concluded on Saturday, three days following the strikes.
The airstrike was one of approximately 100 launched by Israel on Wednesday, targeting locations the Israeli military identified as being linked to Hezbollah across Beirut and other Lebanese regions. That day proved to be the deadliest in nearly six weeks of conflict, with over 350 casualties, including a significant number of women and children.
The attacks predominantly affected commercial areas and densely populated neighborhoods in central Beirut, areas distant from active conflict zones. Since March 2, Israel has issued repeated evacuation warnings in response to Hezbollah’s missile attacks on Israel, which were themselves a retaliation for U.S.-Israeli actions against Iran.
A father’s grief
The father, Hamad al-Jalib, survived because he was away fetching a gas canister while working as the building’s concierge. When he heard that a strike had hit the Ain Mreisseh neighborhood, where he lives, he rushed back, only to see a plume of smoke rising from a building behind a mosque across from 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 rescue teams three days to extract the bodies of his family from under the rubble. “And I still have a daughter missing, her name is Fatima Hamad al-Jalib.” She is 10 years old. His other daughter was 12 while his sons were 17, 14 and 13 years old.
Three other Syrian relatives were also killed in the Ain Mreisseh strike and were buried on Saturday in the town of al-Shuhail in Deir el-Zour, after the family split upon returning to Syria.
Al-Jalib said his family had been displaced from their area and moved to Lebanon in 2020, as local tensions grew involving tribal groups and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
Syrian refugees among the dead and wounded
The casualties from Wednesday’s strikes and others across the country have pushed the death toll in more than a month of Israel’s war with Hezbollah to over 1,950 killed and more than 6,300 wounded, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. The toll includes at least 315 Syrians killed and wounded.
It remains unclear how many of those killed on Wednesday were non-Lebanese, as the Health Ministry did not provide a breakdown by nationality. Officials have reported that at least 39 Syrians were among the dead.
Dalal Harb, a spokesperson for the U.N. refugee agency, said the family killed in Ain Mreisseh was not registered with the UNHCR. There are about 530,000 Syrians refugees registered with UNHCR in Lebanon, with hundreds of thousands more believed to be unregistered.
While hundreds of thousands of Syrians have returned from Lebanon since the ouster of former Syrian President Bashar Assad in December 2024, many others remain reluctant to go back because of the lack of jobs and ongoing violence.
Al-Jalib’s brother, Jomaa, who also lived in Lebanon, said he was about 150 meters (500 feet) away at work when the first blast hit. “We ran and we ran, then the second strike happened.” He said he was arriving at the building as it began to collapse. “It was too late to get anyone out. We yelled for them, but no one answered.”
He said ambulances later recovered the bodies, which he identified at a hospital.
Following the burial on Saturday, men stood shoulder to shoulder in prayer over the fresh graves.
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Associated Press writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.
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