In final moments before truce, Israeli strike kills Lebanese man's family

TYRE, Lebanon, April 17 - Hassan Abu Khalil's family miraculously survived six weeks of war in southern Lebanon, but tragedy struck in the final minutes before a ceasefire came into force. An Israeli strike late on Thursday killed 13 of his relatives, leaving him the sole survivor.

Abu Khalil, 36, stepped out to see friends just before midnight, when a U.S.-brokered truce between Lebanon and Israel was meant to halt fighting between Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah, which began firing at Israel on March 2 in support of Tehran after the start of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.

"I heard a very powerful strike, and when I came back to the neighborhood, I found this had happened," Abu Khalil told Reuters on Friday as he watched a bulldozer dig through the mountains of pulverized concrete that was once his home in the southern Lebanese port city of Tyre.

"In this building, more than 13 members of my family are missing under the rubble. What then, Israel? Just before the ceasefire, it was one massacre after another against us," he said.

Later on Friday, Lebanon's state news agency said rescue teams had recovered 13 bodies and pulled 35 wounded survivors from the ruins of the building that was hit the previous evening. It reported that 15 other people were unaccounted for.

The Israeli military did not respond to Reuters requests for comment on the strike.

In a statement issued a few minutes before the ceasefire came into effect, the military said its strikes over the previous 24 hours had targeted Hezbollah militants, headquarters and rocket launchers.

Lebanon's health ministry said 2,294 people had been killed between March 2 and Thursday, when the ceasefire came into force. The toll included 177 children and 274 women.

The number of combatants killed is unclear. Hezbollah has not disclosed a death toll for its fighters. Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on March 27 that more than 400 had been killed since March 2.

Hezbollah missile fire since then has killed two civilians in Israel, and 13 Israeli soldiers were killed in the military campaign against the Iran-backed group in Lebanon.

In the last few hours before the ceasefire, Hezbollah fired several barrages of rockets at Israeli villages and towns across the border, setting off air-raid sirens and sending people fleeing to shelters. At least two people were wounded, the Israeli ambulance service reported.

'MY FUTURE IS GONE'

On Friday, thousands of Lebanese streamed through Tyre on the way to their southern villages. They crossed over a dirt berm that Lebanese soldiers had erected over the ruins of a main bridge destroyed by Israel earlier on Thursday.

Many were relieved to return to their southern villages, even if they were destroyed.

But Abu Khalil spent the first day of the ceasefire in a haze of despair, unable to eat or sleep.

He stood wringing his hands next to a bulldozer working through the ruins, his eyes locked on the gaping hole that rescuers were searching.

"Since the strike, I've been here and haven't gone anywhere. Every time they pull someone out, we run over to see what happened, who it is - my friend I grew up with, my friend's mother, my friend's father," Abu Khalil said.

He said he had been living in the United Kingdom but returned to Lebanon to be with his extended family.

"Who is left? No one is left. I wish I had never gone out for that coffee and had stayed with them," he said.

“My future is gone here. This was my life, this was my family - what now? What more is there after this?" REUTERS