Never before has the Israeli air force struck so far into northern Lebanon since the start of the war between Hezbollah and Israel. On Monday, October 14, at least 24 people – 12 women, 10 men and two children – were killed in a bombardment targeting Aitou, a village in the Zgharta district, a mountainous area mainly populated by Maronite Christians. The region is also the stronghold of Sleiman Frangieh, leader of the Marada Brigade and former minister: A Maronite leader who is close to Bashar al-Assad, and a candidate for the Lebanese presidency, alongside the Shiite tandem formed by the Amal party and Hezbollah.

On Tuesday, at least two people who had been reported missing were still being searched for by a Red Cross team, while local residents looked on with concern. The victims, a family of displaced persons hailing from the Shiite town of Aitaroun, located in the country's south near the Israel-Lebanon border, had recently settled in Aitou, a small mountain village an hour and a half's drive from Beirut.

On Tuesday, October 15, all that remained of the three-story house they had been renting, located at the end of a small road that ran up the mountainside, was a huge pile of rubble. The rescue workers, who scoured this pile with bare hands, were still collecting parts of the victims' bodies, with the dwelling having been literally wiped from the face of the earth by the power of the explosion. Only two wrecked cars and a pick-up truck pierced by the bomb's shrapnel spoke to the site having once been occupied: The strike had been clearly programmed to leave the house's inhabitants no chance to survive. Five people, including a child, had escaped and were being treated by three hospitals in the area, according to an Internal Security Forces (ISF) officer present at the scene.

'Creating internal conflicts'

Lebanese media have cited the name of a man, described as a 'senior member' of Hezbollah's political wing, as part of the list of victims communicated by the local authority of Aitaroun, the displaced persons' town of origin. This detail was, at this stage, unverifiable. "If it's really him, he was targeted 20 minutes after his arrival," said a resident of Aitou, pointing to one of the destroyed cars. "He was the one who paid the family's rent," added the man in his 30s, angrily: "If the Israelis were targeting him, why didn't they attack him on the road, instead of massacring 24 other people?"

Shocked, Raymond Alouane, the town's mayor, didn't understand: "We never would have thought anything like this would happen here. We open our homes to the displaced. And we will continue to open our homes to our compatriots because we are one country. The Israelis are doing this to break this solidarity between Lebanese [people]," he denounced.

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