‘What, after all this, is left for us? There is nothing left’

Bel Trew reports from Tyre in war-ravaged south Lebanon, as Israel is locked in a fierce battle with Iran-backed Hezbollah

- Bel Trew

Against the intermittent thump of distant Israeli airstrikes, an elderly couple sit on the floor of a brightly coloured classroom, sobbing.

Today they have fled their village in southern Lebanon under bombing, to this absurdly purple room covered in children’s scrawls. Neither of them can walk. They carry only a few bags between them.

Early this morning their youngest son, Mohamed, 38, a father of three and their carer, had been shredded in an Israeli airstrike on his car between Lebanon’s southern city of Tyre, where we are sitting, and their village.

The part-time electrician had been shuttling between his wife and three children, who were staying in a displacement camp in the coastal city, and his elderly parents, who, too old and infirm to move, were sheltering in their village of Chaatiyeh. Both are in Israel’s evacuation zone.

By chance, Mohamed’s own nephew had been the ambulance driver on call in the area when Mohamed was killed. He found his uncle, his limbs severed, his car a charred wreck.

“Mohamed was looking after us, caring for us. Today the light went out of my life,” Iman, the mother, says, the 78-year-old’s voice a cracked shell.

Unable to continue speaking, her husband Daoud, 85, picks up the story.

“When they came and told me my son was killed, I collapsed. Totally collapsed. ‘‘He has left three children with no father. My heart is burning. I feel like part of me died.’’

Sitting perched on a child’s chair in this room, their new home for now, Fouad, 54, their eldest son, explains that his own child had been killed in the last war with Israel in 2024 while volunteering with the civil defence. This is the second time the family has been displaced to this school where we all sit now.

‘‘What, after all this, is left for us from life? There is no one, nothing left,’’ he says, his face in his hands.