By Jihed Abidellaoui and Zohra Bensemra
NABATIEH, Lebanon, June 18 (Reuters) - Rescue workers in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh said they believed their headquarters, clearly identified as a civil defence centre, would be safe from Israeli bombardment - until it was destroyed by an airstrike last month.
Picking through the debris, they were salvaging whatever they could when Reuters visited this week.
"We used to spend more time at this centre than we did in our homes. We lost everything here,"
said Hussein Daqdouq, dressed in grey civil defence overalls, as behind him men sifted through rubble. One pulled a fire extinguisher from the debris.
"We're coming here every day, we're searching and looking around to see if we can find any memories, if we find any of our belongings ... our memories, archives," he said.
Nabatieh has been heavily bombarded by Israel during three months of war with Iran-backed Hezbollah. The city, a provincial capital and some 15 km (10 miles) from the border with Israel, also suffered huge destruction in a war two years ago.
The latest round of hostilities in Lebanon began on March 2, when Hezbollah opened fire at Israel in support of Tehran at the start of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
Nine members of the Nabatieh civil defence have been killed and another 15 wounded in this war, said Hussein Fakih, the regional head of the service. Two of them were killed in a drone strike in front of the centre on May 12, which prompted the civil defence to relocate away from the building.
On May 23, the centre was hit directly and completely destroyed, Fakih said. Civil defence members had been targeted while carrying out firefighting, ambulance and rescue operations, he added.
Malek Zineddine, a member of the Nabatieh civil defence, said the centre was struck with no prior warning and that the civil defence symbol - a blue triangle set within an orange circle - had been displayed on the roof.
"That's what made us so surprised because we always respected the Civil Defence emblem," he said. "We ruled out the possibility of the Israeli enemy targeting us," he said.
The Israeli military and the Israeli prime minister's office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lebanon's health ministry said on May 24 the civil defence centre in Nabatieh had been destroyed in an airstrike the previous day, and that it had been vacated at the time.
MORE DESTRUCTIVE THAN 2024 WAR
Israeli strikes have killed nearly 4,000 people in Lebanon since March 2, including 746 women, children and healthcare workers, the Lebanese health ministry says. Some 1.2 million people have been displaced, according to Lebanese authorities.
Khodr Kodeih, a member of the Nabatieh municipal council, said residents had begun trickling back this week, encouraged by an interim U.S.-Iranian deal to end the regional war. The agreement declares an immediate and permanent end to military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon. But renewed bombardment had led the city to empty out again, he said.
The scale of destruction in Nabatieh is even greater than in 2024, Kodeih added. "There may be more than 1,500 or 2,000 residential or commercial units affected," he said.
Lebanon has yet to fully assess damage to the south, but the latest study by Lebanon’s National Council for Scientific Research found that more than 9,970 housing units had been destroyed or damaged in the Nabatieh area from March 2 to May 17 - the highest level of destruction of any district in Lebanon.
Israeli airstrikes have pummelled towns surrounding Nabatieh since the Iran-U.S. deal was announced, according to Lebanese state media and Lebanese security sources.
While Israeli troops had hit Nabatieh heavily in air strikes, they had not reached it with ground troops, a foreign security official and Lebanese security sources said.
The foreign security official said Israeli troops had been trying to effectively encircle Nabatieh but had encountered fierce resistance from Hezbollah fighters in surrounding villages and hilltops.
(Additional reporting by Maya Gebeily in Beirut and Pesha Magid in Jerusalem; Writing by Tom Perry, Editing by William Maclean)
