TThe funeral was over as quickly as it had begun. Without even a moment of mourning, the women buried the body, lined up right next to the pallbearers. Before they could finish, overzealous Hezbollah staff removed photos of their fallen comrades from the martyrs' mausoleums and hurriedly packed them away. After 10 minutes, the crowd dispersed, moving through a makeshift military checkpoint set up for the event in a southern Beirut neighborhood.
The funeral, a far cry from the usual 90-minute ceremony commemorating Shiite militia dead, was one of dozens held across Lebanon on Thursday. Hezbollah had been announcing the funerals as the death toll from a pager and walkie-talkie bombing campaign, likely initiated by Israel, rose on Tuesday and Wednesday. In total, the explosions killed 42 people and injured around 3,500, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
Mourners who gathered to remember the dead did so cautiously, with memories still fresh of the explosion that interrupted another funeral in Beirut the previous day.
“My friend's father lost an eye in the explosion. We have never seen an attack like this and we are all shocked,” said Said, a 25-year-old driving instructor who had been just metres from the blast at a funeral in Beirut the previous day.
An hour after the burial, Hassan Nasrallah made his first public appearance since the pager attack. Israeli warplanes carried out a series of airstrikes in southern Lebanon, targeting what the Israeli military called “Hezbollah targets.”
The leader appeared tired and soft-spoken, a stark contrast to his previous appearance on Aug. 25, when he declared victory for the group's widespread drone and missile barrage in northern Israel.
“There is no doubt that we have suffered a major security and humanitarian blow, unprecedented in the history of the Lebanese resistance,” Nasrallah said in a speech on Thursday, but he stressed that the offensive “will not defeat us” and vowed to continue fighting until a ceasefire in Gaza is reached.
As Nasrallah spoke, the rumbling grew louder, first in the south before spreading into the skies above Beirut, sending some residents of Beirut's eastern Ashrafieh district onto their balconies and into the streets, craning their necks to the sky.
Israeli fighter jets conducted mock air raids over Beirut, firing flares and hovering over the capital, creating two sonic booms that shook windows. The fighter jets flew at their lowest altitudes over Beirut since fighting between Hezbollah and Israel erupted on October 8.
“I will not talk about the time, place or format, but judgment will come,” Nasrallah continued, unfazed by jets flying overhead.
The sounds of Israeli airstrikes sounded uncomfortably close in Rumeish, a Christian city on the Lebanese-Israeli border about 72 miles (116 kilometers) from Beirut. Rumeish lies between Aita al-Shaab and Yaroun, two of Lebanon's most frequently targeted towns, but has largely escaped Israeli attacks.
“There is shelling from all angles, very intense, lots of smoke, planes everywhere,” Father Najib al-Amir, a local priest, said by telephone.
Amir is a community leader in a Christian village in southern Lebanon and has tried to strike a balance between maintaining friendly relations with Hezbollah and ensuring his village is not used as a base for attacks against Israel.
“Until now, [Rmeish] “We're OK, but we don't know what's going to happen. We're isolated, we're tired, and we're scared,” the priest continued.
Attacks in Lebanon and fears of Hezbollah retaliation have become a familiar but still stressful part of daily life in the country. Just three weeks earlier, Nasrallah said Lebanon could “breathe and relax” after a Hezbollah retaliatory attack for the Israeli assassination of Hezbollah military chief Fouad Shukr in Beirut.
But the relief was short-lived, and Tuesday's attacks plunged Lebanon back into instability.
At the time of the attack, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant commented that the war had entered a new phase, and photos of tanks being transported to northern Israel were widely shared on Lebanese social media, amid private speculation that Israel was launching a full-scale war.
Still, Hezbollah supporters said they trusted Nasrallah and were ready to deal with whatever happened.
“Our leaders are wise and they will decide how to retaliate. It doesn't have to be now,” Saeed said, adding that the attacks over the past week were “something we have to overcome to achieve victory.”
