A mother pleaded for a final glimpse of her family members as their bodies were carefully removed from an ambulance this morning. Two of the remains were shrouded in a single white cloth, bearing the marks of the explosion that killed them.
Just a day before – before an Israeli airstrike ended their lives – Zaynab, 13, Zahraa, 12, Malika, 9, and Yasmina, 6, had been playing together in their grandparents’ yard.
Now, in the cemetery of the village of Irkay, in southern Lebanon, the girls lie side-by-side, alongside their grandparents, aunts, and a cousin.
“Keep a good memory of them in your mind,” male relatives urged as they guided their cousin away from the ambulance.
Their mother, Suzanne Taqi, descended into the graves to embrace them one last time.
Nine members of the Taqi family were killed in the single strike, which fell without warning from the sky. The tragedy underscores the ongoing impact of regional conflict on civilian populations.
On Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ordered the evacuation of the entire area of Lebanon just south of the village.
The IDF has not provided any information regarding the target of the strike.
“Everyone here knows what my girls meant to me,” Mohammed Rida Taqi, the girls’ father, told CNN, with one side of his face bandaged and red, inflamed wounds from the blast.
Taqi recounted that his daughter Yasmina had asked for a necklace inscribed with “daddy’s soul,” instead of her own name.
After burying his daughters, he had only one thought: to sift through the rubble to discover that necklace.
