Lebanese search for dead in devastated villages as Israel withdraws

Residents of south Lebanon have returned to devastated villages, searching for the bodies of relatives killed in last year’s war between Israel and Hezbollah, as Israeli troops withdrew from most of the territory.

In the frontline village of Kfar Kila, barely a building was left standing. “I reached my neighborhood and I couldn’t tell where my house had been,” says one resident, Noha Hammoud.

“The entire neighborhood is destroyed.”

Rescue workers had pulled several bodies from the rubble, and had even found two people still alive, she says. Local sources say those found dead and alive were fighters from Hezbollah, thousands of whom were killed in the war.

Senior Lebanese politician Ali Hassan Khalil, who hails from the south, says hundreds of residents have gone to inspect more than a half dozen villages that became accessible, adding that the Lebanese army was still working to clear roads.

However, Israel’s continued presence in five south Lebanon posts left “an open wound,” he adds.

The conflict, which began when Hezbollah opened fire on October 8, 2023 in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, displaced tens of thousands of Israelis from northern Israel and more than a million people in Lebanon.

At the Israeli Kibbutz Misgav Am, next to the border with Lebanon, some residents visited and planted trees.

“Although we had to evacuate, our hearts stayed here,” says one of the kibbutz members, Daniel Malik. “We really want to come back but there is big uncertainty because we don’t know when it will be safe.”

In Yaroun, another frontline village in Lebanon, a woman holds a bouquet of spring flowers in one hand and Hezbollah’s yellow flag in another as she surveyed the destruction.

Rescue workers pulled at least one body from the rubble.

“Our feeling is a mix of joy and sadness because there are still martyrs we have yet to find,” says returning resident Suhaila Daher. “All the destruction can be replaced, thank God, but the martyrs will not return.”

Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah, speaking to Reuters in Yaroun, says: “The Israeli enemy is still occupying Lebanese land and this Lebanese land must be liberated and now the primary responsibility falls on the Lebanese state.”