The air strike that killed the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah shook the earth for hundreds of metres in every direction.
A few blocks away, in the Beirut suburb known as the Dahieh, Mehdi Moussawi thought his own building was falling down.
From his balcony, the 45-year-old taxi driver and his wife Zahraa – who asked that their names be changed for this story – watched as a thick blanket of smoke and dust enveloped everything around them. In the distance, they could hear debris raining down, and overhead the familiar buzz of an Israeli drone.
The drones had become so common over Dahieh in the previous few days that they barely noticed them anymore. A majority Shia suburb in the south of Beirut, Dahieh was once again under Israel’s watchful eye; its more than half a million residents again under threat of death from above.
“The missiles come down from the sky,” Mehdi said, gesturing the arc of a projectile falling to earth, “and suddenly everything you have is gone.”
He was sitting on a dirty, sun-baked patch of pavement on the edge of Martyrs’ Square in central Beirut – now home for the couple and their teenage boys. Around them were hundreds of others in similar circumstances, many from Dahieh. The suburb has borne the brunt of the recent Israeli bombing of Beirut, prompting a mass exodus of virtually its entire population.
Dahieh is largely under the control of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed political and paramilitary group that is a powerful force across Lebanon.
Hezbollah refused requests from the BBC for permission to enter the suburb for this story, to see the bomb damage, but a BBC analysis of video footage, Israeli evacuation warnings and recent satellite imagery shows at least 65 air strikes which have severely damaged or completely destroyed buildings. Some of those strikes have comprised dozens of individual bombs, and many have levelled not only the apparent target building but destroyed or severely damaged several adjacent buildings too.
This was the fate of Mehdi and Zahraa’s apartment – to be next door to an Israeli strike. Zahraa wept when she saw footage of their blackened and mangled building. “Look at us,” she pleaded. “Our home is gone. We have no hygiene, we cannot wash. We have nothing.”
Dahieh is often described as a Hezbollah stronghold. The term does not reflect the totality of the suburb – a densely packed residential area where other political parties operate and where not everyone supports Hezbollah – but the group is certainly the strongest force there. Above ground, it is woven through the suburb’s social and political fabric, and provides services like welfare and education. Below, it has bunkers and tunnels from which it can operate.
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