UN refugee agency says staff among those killed in Israeli air strikes in Lebanon
The UN’s refugee agency says one of its staff members and one of her children were killed in an Israeli air strike in eastern Lebanon – one of well over a thousand such strikes over the past two days.
The UNHCR said Dina Darwiche’s home was hit on Monday. Her husband and her older son were rescued and are in hospital with serious injuries, the agency said.
Ms Darwiche had worked in UNHCR’s Bekaa office for 12 years.
Meanwhile Ali Basma, who had worked for UNHCR’s office in the southern city of Tyre as a cleaner, was also killed.
In a statement, the agency said it was “outraged and deeply saddened” by their killing.
“Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon are now relentlessly claiming hundreds of civilian lives,” said UNHCR’s global director Filippo Grandi on Tuesday.
“And I am very saddened to confirm that two UNHCR colleagues were also killed yesterday.”
Ms Darwiche’s friends described her as “the gentlest and kindest soul we knew.”
“She had been dedicated to her humanitarian work with UNHCR for as long as I can remember,” wrote Professor Jasmin Lilian Diab, an academic at the Lebanese American University, on X. “I am broken. I am absolutely destroyed.”
Funerals for those killed have been taking place across Lebanon.
In the southern city of Sidon, Mohammed Hilal had gathered with hundreds of other mourners to say goodbye to his daughter at a funeral also held for eight other people.
Three Hezbollah members were among those being buried, according to Reuters news agency which filmed the scene.
Mr Hilal knelt over his daughter’s body, covered in an embroidered blanket, and wept.
He told Reuters news agency that he had left his house in the town of Saksakiyeh on Monday to complete paperwork identifying his family. When he returned, he said, “I found her martyred due to the brutal aggression, the cowardly aggression that is killing children.”
Israel says it has warned Lebanese to leave their homes and put distance between themselves and sites used by Hezbollah.
But Lebanon’s health minister Firass Abiad told the BBC Israel had caused “carnage” and it was “clear” that many victims were civilians, including children and women who were in their homes doing “normal things”.
Israel says it targeted Hezbollah sites, accusing the Iranian-backed group of hiding weapons and rockets in residential homes and of using civilians as human shields.
On Tuesday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue attacking Hezbollah sites. Israel has alleged that some weapons are being stored in civilian homes.
“Anyone who has a missile in their living room and a rocket in their garage will not have a home,” he said in a video posted on social media.
Meanwhile the UN’s children’s agency told the BBC that many of the children in shelters in the capital had been “heavily traumatised”.
Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese are believed to have fled their homes, the country’s foreign minister says.
“Most of them have left in a few minutes without taking anything, just getting their cars and leaving the house,” Edouard Beigbeder from Unicef said.
“Some of them have seen their house being destroyed, and some have witnessed their family members, siblings killed or injured. So those who reached Beirut are heavily traumatised.”
Additional reporting Hugo Bachega and Nafiseh Kohnavard in Beirut
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