As Israeli war on Hezbollah expands, rescuers in east reach their limit

The teams went back to digging.

Weeks into Israel’s war with Hezbollah, which Israeli officials say is aimed at pushing fighters away from the border, much of the military campaign has focused on the group’s stronghold in southern Lebanon, where ground troops began operating earlier this month. But Israel has also expanded its aerial campaign across the country, including in the eastern Bekaa Valley, where rescue workers say they are struggling to keep pace with the destruction.

Hezbollah’s earliest training and organizing in Lebanon took place here, in this rural, largely agricultural valley that runs along Lebanon’s border with Syria, and the area has remained a critical foothold for the organization. Hezbollah granted a Washington Post reporter and photographer access to the Bekaa Valley and required that a member of the group accompany the team during their trip. Interviews were conducted independently and Hezbollah did not review any of The Post’s reporting.

Israel has pummeled the region with hundreds of airstrikes over the last three weeks targeting weapons stores, infrastructure and fighters. Thousands of civilians have fled west, others crossed into Syria. But unlike southern Lebanon, where the Israeli military has told residents of specific villages to flee, no evacuation orders have been announced for towns and villages in this area, meaning the strikes come with little to no warning.

That is what residents say happened last Tuesday in Khodor, 60 miles north of the Israeli border, when a bomb landed without notice on the home of retired schoolteacher Zuhair Awda and his wife, Fatima. They were both inside the house, along with their daughter-in-law, grandson and a family friend, when the strike hit around 3 p.m., neighbors and relatives said.

The Israel Defense Forces did not respond to specific questions about the attack, but said in a statement that “the IDF follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”

Neighbors and civil defense crews quickly descended on the site. Mud kicked up by the blast covered trees, lawn furniture and a neighboring home. Men crowded in the street and surrounding orchards to watch, while medical teams waited beside ambulances — in case there were any survivors.

Despite the frenzied efforts, at times the search felt painfully slow. Much of the debris — including concrete slabs sandwiched together with twisted rebar — required construction equipment to move. And only a few people could search the rubble of the single home by hand, fearing any added weight might trigger further collapse and crush any survivors.

It was more than an hour after the strike when the rescue worker thought he heard a woman’s voice, prompting the neighbor to call Fatima’s cellphone. At that point, two bodies had been pulled from the rubble. Three were still underneath.

Later, someone yelled out that he had spotted a hand — it belonged to a child. For a moment, there was hope. Someone yelled for an air pump, which rescue workers used to gently loosen some of the debris. The next request was for a body bag. The crowd shuffled uneasily.

It was Zuhair’s grandson, 14-year-old Hassan.

Rescue teams found Fatima next. A relative screamed as the bodies were loaded into ambulances. Medics wrote the names of the deceased in marker on the white plastic body bags.

Zuhair’s body was recovered last. His daughter-in-law, Nuha Awda, and friend Muhammad Hassan were among the five killed in the attack.

A retired public schoolteacher and farmer, Zuhair was described by neighbors as kind and giving. His two sons also valued service, they said, and joined the Lebanese army.

Everyone at the scene was adamant that the family had no links to Hezbollah — and said the house was not being used to store or conceal weapons. The strike was not the first in Khodor, a majority Shiite village about 48 miles east of Beirut and 10 miles south of the regional capital, Baalbek.

Along the track that leads from Khodor to the main road, destroyed buildings and upturned earth from at least three previous strikes were visible. When asked why a rural area far from the front lines would be hit so many times, one man replied: “Everyone in this village has a loyalty. Our affiliation is known.”

He spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his first name, Mysar, for fear of retribution, and insisted the area was not being used by fighters.

“They are only civilians,” he said of the village residents. “These strikes are trying to destroy the will of the people.”

Hezbollah is believed to have stored weapons and other supplies across its strongholds in Lebanon while preparing for the Israeli assault, according to regional officials and analysts. Videos posted to social media of some strikes in the Bekaa Valley have shown blasts followed by secondary explosions, which weapons experts say are consistent with the presence of munitions in the area.

In September, the Israeli military warned residents of the Bekaa it would be targeting Hezbollah positions. “Residents who are near or inside homes where missiles and weapons are stored — move away immediately for your own safety," an IDF spokesman posted on X.

Outside the Christian towns and villages of the Bekaa, which many here consider safe, much of the valley feels deserted. The region stretches across two administrative areas: Baalbek-Hermel and Bekaa, and is home to about a million people, according to United Nations figures.

“They have become like ghost cities,” said Bachir Khodr, governor of Baalbek-Hermel. In the past three weeks, Israel has launched more than 680 strikes on the Bekaa, he said, citing figures from local authorities. More than 260 people have been killed, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Along the main road to Baalbek, which boasts beautifully preserved ruins of one of the largest temples in the Roman Empire, there were several places that appeared to have been targeted by strikes. Shops, homes and warehouses were destroyed. At one site, bags of grain and sugar had burst open and were scattered among the debris. At another, bits of broken plates and coffee cups were the only signs that a kitchen once stood there.

“We haven’t even been able to scan the damage,” Khodr said. “I can’t even tell you how many residential dwellings have been damaged or destroyed.”

Fayez el-Chekieh, the head of the civil defense station in Zahle, the capital of the Bekaa region, said the pace of rescue operations has been relentless. His team had been trained to respond to earthquakes, he said, but had never seen anything like this.

“We were not prepared for a war,” Chekieh said.

The area also saw strikes during the last war between Israel and Hezbollah, in 2006, but the munitions the IDF is using now are larger and more devastating, Chekieh said.

“In 2006, only part of the building would collapse” in an airstrike, he said. “Now, the entire building is gone, collapsed on the ground,” and searching the wreckage from a single attack can take hours or days.

Chekieh’s son Samir, 33, works with his father in the civil defense. After weeks of responding to airstrikes every day, he said he feels “mentally ill.”

“The things we’ve seen, it’s not normal,” he said, drinking strong coffee out of a small plastic cup.

“Entire families, gone. And the children...” he stopped. “Everybody has a limit and I feel like we are going to reach that limit soon.”

Mohamad El Chamaa in Beirut and Alon Rom in Tel Aviv contributed.