Children killed in Lebanon as Israeli strikes hit homes far from front lines of war with Hezbollah

BEIRUT (AP) — Jawad Younes, 11, and his cousins were playing soccer in the lot between their houses, as they often did. His little brother, 4-year-old Mehdi, had joined them but grew tired, so Jawad took him home and handed him off to their mother before returning to the game. Minutes later, an Israeli strike came.

The target was Jawad's uncle's home. The blast shook neighboring buildings and threw Jawad's siblings at home to the ground. As their mother, Malak Meslmani, scrambled to help them up, she could think only of Jawad.

“I was pulling my children off the floor in the house, but as I was running to pick them up, I screamed, ‘Jawad,’” she said. ”My heart told me.”

Her son was instantly killed in the March 27 Israeli strike in Saksakieh. So was one of his cousins — so close they were more like brothers. Several other children were wounded.

Jawad's uncle also was killed. He was an interior design engineer; Jawad wanted to be an engineer like him. Meslmani called him a civilian. But like many Shiite families in southern Lebanon, the family were loyal supporters of the militant group and political party Hezbollah, which formed in the 1980s to fight Israel’s occupation of the area.

Jawad and his cousin are among 168 children killed — of more than 2,100 people in all — by Israel's strikes in the six weeks of renewed war between the country and Iran-backed Hezbollah.

Israel has often struck alleged Hezbollah militants or officials in their homes without warning, frequently in areas far from the front line when they are with their families, in apartment buildings surrounded by uninvolved neighbors. The Israeli military rarely names the targets of its strikes but says it takes measures to minimize civilian casualties — including children — and blames Hezbollah members for mixing with the general population. The families of children killed accuse Israel of committing war crimes because of the large number of civilian casualties.

At least two Israeli civilians — both adults — and 13 soldiers have been killed in the current war with Hezbollah, according to figures from Israel. One of the civilians was killed by mistaken Israeli fire.

In response to Associated Press questions, the Israeli military didn't deny that children have been killed in its Lebanon strikes but said it has targeted Hezbollah facilities and militants. The army says it's killed hundreds of Hezbollah operatives but has provided little evidence to support the claim.

Under international law governing armed conflict, it's never legal to directly target civilians, but collateral damage — harm to civilians when striking a military target — is allowed if it is proportional to the anticipated military gains of any given strike.

The Israeli military told AP in a statement that its strikes follow the law, including “the principles of distinction, proportionality, and the taking of precautions.”

Charles Trumbull, an assistant University of South Carolina law professor who studies the law and ethics of armed conflict, said it's difficult to assess whether the proportionality threshold was met without knowing the strike targets and whether the military knew children were present.

“To the extent that they knew that children were likely to be harmed or killed in these strikes, and as an ethical matter, absolutely I think that should affect the calculus,” he said. “Just because certain strikes might not violate the law on conflict doesn’t mean that they’re not concerning or problematic or that they are morally justified.”

Children crushed under their own homes

At 2 a.m. March 12, Taline Shehab — who would have turned 4 last month — was sleeping when missiles tore into an apartment above hers in the family's building in Aramoun, about 20 km (12 miles) south of Beirut, causing it to collapse. Taline and her father died; her mother was critically wounded.

Aramoun is a religiously mixed area that was generally considered safe, though it had been targeted by airstrikes in the previous Israel-Hezbollah war, in 2024.

Taline’s father, Mohamad, was a drone operator and video producer who often worked with the Lebanese army and on high-profile television productions. He and his wife, Nathalie, ran a fashion company; Taline appeared regularly on its social media.

“They were a very close family. Their daily life revolved around their daughter,” said Ali Shehab, Mohamad's brother.

Taline “was full of personality,” he said. “She was very attached to her father. She loved being around him and didn’t like to share him with anyone.”

He comforts himself with the thought that “maybe Mohammed and Taline, because they are so attached to each other, God chose them both.”

Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, who's worked extensively in Gaza and Lebanon and runs an initiative treating some of the most seriously war-wounded children at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, said that, like Taline, most of the cases he has seen are “children being crushed underneath the rubble of their own homes.”

A lifetime shadowed by war and loss

Ten-year-old Zeinab al-Jabali used to tag along wherever her father went: the corner store, the mountains around their village in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

Now, he sleeps in the Beirut hospital where doctors are treating his wife and three older daughters, all wounded in the strike that killed Zeinab.

War has shadowed most of Hassan al-Jabali’s life. In 1982, his brother — then 10, like Zeinab — was killed by an Israeli missile.

Al-Jabali made a living selling mouneh, or preserved foods such as raisins and dried herbs, and worked for his cousin's factory producing laban, or yogurt.

On March 5, al-Jabali’s wife and daughters were preparing for iftar, the meal ending the daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan, at his wife’s sister’s house when the airstrike hit it.

Al-Jabali acknowledged his brother-in-law — who was killed — “in the past was with the resistance,” referring to Hezbollah.

“But they struck him at home, in a house full of children, full of girls,” said al-Jabali, who heard the blast from elsewhere in the village and found a scene of carnage when he rushed to check on his family.

He said his wife still doesn’t know Zeinab is dead; he’s afraid the grief would endanger her recovery.

Families grieve: “I remember everything”

In response to questions about the strikes that killed Jawad, Taline, and Zeinab, the Israeli military didn't give details about the intended targets beyond that they were related to Hezbollah.

The military's statement said Israel regrets any civilian harm but that it's operating against Hezbollah, “which attacked the State of Israel under Iranian backing.”

Many Lebanese have blamed Hezbollah for pulling their country into the war when it fired missiles across the border March 2, two days after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran. But for others, the devastation from Israeli strikes has strengthened their support.

“We are now holding onto the resistance more than any time before,” said Meslmani, Jawad's mother.

Despite Israeli army notices for residents in large swathes of southern Lebanon to flee, many in their town of Saksakieh stayed. Displaced people from farther south took refuge there. Life felt almost normal before the strike that killed Jawad.

Now, Meslmani visits his grave in a small cemetery overlooking a mountain vista, where she can hear warplanes roar overhead.

“I remember everything," she said. "How he used to eat and drink, how he used to play, how he would get dressed and fix his beautiful hair.”

Since he was killed, the planes no longer bother her.

“The most precious thing, my heart, is gone," she said. "What more can they do?”

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Associated Press journalists Malak Harb in Beirut and Koral Saeed in Abu Snan, Israel, contributed to this report.