FROM LEBANON FOR de VOLKSKRANT

Fabio Bucciarelli | Libano, Ottobre 2024

per deVolkskrant

 

[…]In the tumult of this information war, one could almost forget the consequences of the conflict are too real. Shortly after the warning directed at the Sahel Hospitality on Monday evening, Israel struck another target further down in the neighborhood. Coincidentally or not, the bomb fell right across from the Rafiq Hariri Hospital, Lebanon’s largest public Hospital. Eighteen people were killed, including four children.

Tuesday afternoon, as the smoke clears, an excavator is still hard at work removing the debris. Bassil Mokdad, 25, takes a moment to catch his breath after spending the entire evening helping to retrieve the bodies. he is a member of the “civil protection”, a volunteer collective in Lebanon that responds during bombings or natural disasters. When he arrived with his colleagues, Mokdad immediately called for backup. “There were bodies everywhere.”

Among the rubble, he came across a Sudanese man – dead. Mokdad’s eyes look dull. “Most of the bodies were intact, but his was in pieces”. It haunts him. Further on, an ambulance arrives, into which another body is being loaded. Two young women scream in grief when they see who it is. Then the doors close, and the ambulance drives away in a cloud of dust.