Lebanese organizations have begun to identify children, humanitarians and journalists among a growing number of civilians killed in Israel’s intense bombardment.
From girl scouts to first aid responders, cleaners to electrical engineers, the names and faces of the Lebanese civilians killed by Israeli airstrikes this week have begun to emerge, as the nation reels from the deadliest day in its history since the 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990.
Hundreds of people have been killed since Israel began launching airstrikes in Lebanon on Sunday, in what it describes as a campaign targeting the militant group Hezbollah and its weapons stores.
Many Lebanese are still taking stock of those lost on Monday, when Israeli strikes killed 558 people in a single day, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. The toll includes 50 children and 94 women.
Among them was Dina Darwiche, an employee of the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR. Her body was found along with that of her youngest son after an Israeli missile hit the building where they lived in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa region.
Friends wrote tributes to Ms. Darwiche on social media, many of them posting a selfie of her smiling and posing with the son who was killed with her. Others shared a video of a U.N. campaign she ran in previous years against gender-based violence.
“She had been dedicated to her humanitarian work with UNHCR for as long as I can remember,” her friend, Jasmin Diab, posted on the social media platform X. “I am broken. I am absolutely destroyed. I cannot breathe. When will the world let us breathe?!”
