BINT JBEIL, Lebanon (AP) — A village in southern Lebanon on Tuesday buried five people, including three children and their father, killed in an Israeli strike over the weekend.
Shadi Charara, a car dealer, was killed while driving home to the southern seaside city of Tyre on Sunday with his wife and four children after having lunch at his father-in-law's house in the town of Bint Jbeil, a few kilometers from the border with Israel.
Sam Bazzi, the children's maternal grandfather, told The Associated
Press the family thought they were safe because they had no affiliation with Hezbollah.
“We’re regular citizens and we don’t belong to any group,” Bazzi said. “And so we thought we had nothing to do with it and we were just living normally, coming and going.”
The family was only a few hundred meters from Bazzi's house when a motorcycle passed by, and at the same moment, the Israeli drone struck. It killed Charara, his twin 18-month-old son and daughter Hadi and Silan, 8-year-old daughter Celine, and the motorcyclist, a local man named Mohammed Majed Mroue.
The children’s mother, Amina Bazzi, and her oldest daughter, Asil, survived but were seriously wounded. Bazzi, her face bruised and swollen, was carried on a stretcher through the crowd at the funeral of her husband and children.
After Sunday’s strike, the Israeli military said it was targeting a Hezbollah militant, whom it did not name, and that he “operated from within a civilian population.” It acknowledged that civilians were killed and said that it was reviewing the incident.
At the funeral in Bint Jbeil, the coffins were draped in Lebanese flags, and only Lebanese flags were waving in the crowd. At other funerals in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah banners are often on display.
A U.S.-brokered ceasefire halted the latest Israel-Hezbollah war in November. That conflict began on Oct. 8, 2023, when Hezbollah began firing rockets across the border, one day after a deadly Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel sparked the war in Gaza
Israel responded with shelling and airstrikes in Lebanon, and the two sides became locked in an escalating conflict that became a full-blown war in September 2024.
Since the ceasefire took effect, Israel has continued to launch near-daily airstrikes in southern Lebanon. Israeli officials frequently say it is targeting Hezbollah militants or infrastructure. Hezbollah has only claimed firing across the border once since the ceasefire, but Israel says the militant group is trying to rebuild its capabilities.
Charara's sister, Amina, who lives in Dearborn, Mich., said houses belonging to the family were damaged or destroyed in last year's war, but they had counted themselves lucky that none of their relatives had been harmed.
“We always said thank God we only lost stones and not human beings," she said. "“The houses and stones can be rebuilt, but how can my brother return?”
Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said after the strike that Shadi Charara and his children were U.S. citizens, while family members told the AP that Charara did not have U.S. citizenship but that his siblings and father live in the United States and are citizens. They said Charara had applied to join them and recently received approval but was still waiting for visas.
A State Department official declined to comment on “personal details.”
The European Union on Sunday condemned the strike and called for “full respect and implementation of the ceasefire agreement between Lebanon and Israel.”
“Security concerns should be addressed by making full use of the monitoring mechanism established in the framework of the ceasefire agreement,” it said.
Amina Charara said the family in the U.S. had been constantly worried about their relatives in Lebanon.
“My brother was a man who loved life and loved his family. He had nothing to do with politics. He was working to provide for his family,” she said. “What was the fault of the children for Israel to kill them?"
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Sewell reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Kareem Chehayeb contributed to this report.
