NABATIYEH, Lebanon — Past the shattered glass of the balcony doors of Najib Ayyad's damaged apartment in southern Lebanon, he can see a historic local landmark — now occupied by Israeli forces.
"You see the castle?" he asks. Beaufort Castle, a crusader-era fortress, was seized in May by Israeli forces who have now gone far beyond what the Israeli government describes as a "security zone" in southern Lebanon.
"They can see us clearly from there," he says. "Even if my apartment weren't damaged I couldn't stay."
On the day we visit in June, smoke is rising from an Israeli artillery strike near Nabatiyeh, a small city that is a hub in the south of the country. The sound of Israeli drones is a constant backdrop in a city devastated by war, but which still shows tentative signs of residents trying to rebuild their lives here.
Ayyad, a parliamentary office worker, has come back only to salvage some belongings from the apartment. He used to commute to work from here to the parliament member's office near Sidon, a short drive away. With no money to rent another apartment, he is staying with his daughter in her flat in Beirut.
It's a struggle to even get to his apartment. Broken chunks of concrete cover the building's entranceway while the staircase is littered in rubble and broken glass. Israeli air strikes have knocked out electricity throughout the city.
Three floors up, shafts of light from empty windows with jagged frames illuminate piles of broken furniture.
On the street outside, most homes have been destroyed or heavily damaged. One elegant multi-story villa set back behind metal gates appears intact but the back of the building has been heavily damaged.
A long history
Nabatiyeh is an administrative center for the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, whose fighters and infrastructure Israel now says it is targeting. But Hezbollah is also a political party and a provider of social services, and as in other towns and cities in the south, much of the damage and many of the casualties are civilian.
Lebanese health officials say at least 4,200 people have been killed since the war began on March 2. At least one in five of the dead are women or children, they say. Israel says 37 of its soldiers and one military contractor, along with two civilians, have been killed by Hezbollah attacks.
For hundreds of years, Nabatiyeh's covered market was a thriving commercial center — first on a transit route between Jerusalem, Damascus and Mecca and then as an important Ottoman-era town. In 1982, invading Israeli forces occupied the city, withdrawing three years later.
Its covered market with red-tiled roofs and stone arches featured farm produce, clothing and handicrafts — much of it now in rubble from Israeli attacks.
"We are telling people to wait to come back," says Mayor Abbas Fakhreddin pointing out damage to the historic market. "Not only because of the security situation but also because we don't have the necessities of life. There is a huge amount of work to be done here."
Fakhreddin and residents here say the extensive damage appears to show Israel's aim of halting the city's commercial life.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in July that Israeli forces further south had demolished more than 15,000 homes in border villages to prevent residents from returning. Those villages are in what Israel calls a "buffer zone" that it says is aimed at preventing Hezbollah from launching more rockets or other attacks across the border.
Bodies still under the rubble
Just around the corner from the Nabatiyeh covered market is Hanan Hamadi's tiny convenience store. It is far less grand than the historic shops, but a vivid illustration that residents are determined to overcome the destruction of this latest war with Israel.
"When we arrived we found the shop completely damaged," says Hamadi, who returned with her mother from Beirut, where they had taken refuge. She and her mother threw out damaged goods, restocked, put the framed photo of her late father back on the wall and re-opened for business. A plastic sheet substitutes for the broken door.
A little boy comes in to ask the price of a candy bar. Hamadi tells him whatever he has is enough and later explains that the child's father was injured in an attack.
The shop's wares include canned goods, yogurt, plastic bags of flat bread, batteries and – in a sign of optimism that life could someday be normal again – birthday candles.
"God willing we will rebuild the market better than ever and everyone will come back," says her mother Salwa Hachouch.
But for now it's hard to imagine. Two months after some of the most devastating airstrikes, there are still bodies buried under the rubble.
Hamadi says the Basma family, who lived just across a lane from them in a neighborhood called the Nuns' Quarter, was killed in an airstrike in March — the parents along with all four of their children. The impact collapsed the house on top of them and two of the children — ages around 8 and 11 — are still under the rubble, she says.
"Now when I look at the neighborhood they are the only ones I can think about," she says.
She says in a quiet area full of older people, the family's four children brought life to the neighborhood. "They were the ones who made all the noise and activity," she says.
Hammadi says she used to drink coffee with the mother, who was in her late 30s. She would talk about waiting for her children to grow up.
"They were wonderful people," she says. "Now there's no one left from the family."
Amnesty International investigated the March 31 airstrike that killed the family, saying there were no apparent military targets nearby and calling it a potential war crime. Another neighbor was also killed in the airstrike.
The human rights group said the family had stayed despite the danger because they had no money to leave. The father was an unemployed house painter. The children were between the ages of seven and 16.
Israel told Amnesty last month it was investigating but provided no further information. It refused to provide an update on the case in response to an NPR query, repeating that it takes precautions to mitigate harm to civilians. It did not answer what the precautions were or why they resulted in the deaths of the family with no apparent military target nearby.
Resilience, tested to the limit
Hamadi, who is 40, says she and her mother stayed in Nabatiyeh during the war with Israel two years ago and every conflict before that.
"Before we were able to withstand the strikes. This time we couldn't," she says. "In this war they are not distinguishing between civilians and others," she says referring to the Israeli military. "Whoever dies, dies."
Hamadi took leave from her job with a non-governmental organization to help her mother. She says there is so much damage she often doesn't recognize once-familiar streets. Death and destruction have hollowed out the city she grew up in.
"Now when we look at the neighborhood, or the houses where people used to be we ask ourselves – 'Where are the children? Where are the people?' There's nobody," she says.
"The difference between us and others is that we are very resilient," she says of people in the south. "But at the same time we have reached a stage where we are tired."
Exhausted first responders
On the edge of Nabatiyeh, a house turned into a center for first responders buzzes with the intense camaraderie of bonds forged in dangerous environments. Some of the young men joke and drink coffee as they watch black smoke rise from artillery strikes in the distance. Others prepare food to be distributed to families in town.
Israeli air strikes have killed at least 130 Lebanese first responders, including three from this all-volunteer unit of the Nabatiyeh Emergency Medical Services They include Jude Sleiman, the16-year-old son of the unit commander Mohammad Sleiman. The boy, wearing a paramedic uniform, was killed along with a 23-year-old colleague while on a motorcycle delivering food to civilians.
Ali Rida, who develops software embedded in devices such as smartwatches, gave up his job three years ago to volunteer as a paramedic. He has worked in Qatar, Thailand and Turkey. But it's here in his hometown of Nabatiyeh where he got the full-sleeve tattoo depicting characters from the movie The Godfather and the Statue of Liberty.
"One of my dreams is to spend Christmas in New York," he says, a longing fostered by the Home Alone movies. "Probably I can't get a visa to the U.S. but still it's a dream."
"This is our duty," he says. "Whenever the country needs us we must be there."
Mohammad Sleiman says this war with its toll on civilians is unlike any others he has encountered. Some of the paramedics have died in follow-up strikes that killed them as they responded to calls to help the wounded.
"This is creating a lot of psychological pressure but the guys insist on doing this job despite the danger," he says.
Nabatiyeh, he says, was once a city full of life. Even during the previous war with Israel two years ago, he says residents would come and go and the paramedics could go and see their families. Now, he says they spend weeks without going home.
"We are sitting here, waiting for the airstrikes," he says.
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