By Raghed Waked and Thomas Suen
BEIRUT, March 31 (Reuters) – A month ago, Nariman al-Issa’s life was like any 12-year-old’s: she played with toys and rode her bicycle in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Her childhood was turned upside down when an Israeli strike killed her parents and siblings and destroyed their home.
Now the young Syrian is out of school and barely surviving with her extended family out on the street in the Lebanese capital – among the 1 million displaced by the Israeli military’s expanding air strikes and mass evacuation orders.
Issa and her family fled Beirut’s southern suburbs in 2024, during the last conflict between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, but they returned home when that two-month war ended.
But since conflict resumed on March 2, alongside the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran, Issa’s life has been upended. In mid-March, the Israeli strike hit the building where her parents, two brothers and sister were living while she was staying nearby with her aunt, Majida al-Moussawi.
“I was at my aunt’s and we heard there was a strike … I said let’s go to mama’s. We went and found the building had collapsed on mama and papa,” she told Reuters.
FAMILY RELYING ON AID DONATIONS
Issa and the surviving members of the family now live off donations distributed by aid groups, having lost their jobs as cleaners and concierges in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
By night, as cold settles in, they huddle by a bonfire they keep alive with whatever they can find – tree branches, cardboard and even plastic.
“In the past, I was in my house, my friends would come over and I had a lot of toys and things … I had a bicycle and my friends and I would play downstairs. I was very happy in that house. But now that I’m here, no, I’m not well,” Issa said.
More than 1,200 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon since March 2, according to Lebanese authorities. They include at least 11 Syrians, according to the health ministry’s statements, but the breakdown does not always give details on all the Syrian fatalities.
‘WHEN IS MAMA COMING?’
In the first two weeks of the war, more than 180,000 Syrian nationals left Lebanon, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Thousands of Syrians have lived in Beirut’s southern suburbs for years after fleeing the conflict raging in their homeland since 2011.
But Moussawi, Issa’s aunt, told Reuters their family no longer had a home in Aleppo, the northern Syrian region they escaped from a decade ago.
“I can’t leave the girl because she’s missing a lot – no mother, no father,” Moussawi said.
“Thank God she’s 12 – if she was older and more aware, it would have ruined me. In the beginning when I was taking her she was asking, ‘where did mama go, when is mama coming?'”
Both Issa and her aunt told Reuters they desperately wanted life to go back to a semblance of normality.
Lebanon was pulled into the war when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel in solidarity with Tehran, two days after Iran was attacked by Israel and the United States on February 28. Hezbollah’s attack prompted the new Israeli ground and air offensive.
“I hope I can go back to school, I hope I can play with my friends again, and that life returns to how it was before,” Issa said.
(Reporting by Raghed Waked and Thomas Suen; Writing by Maya Gebeily; Editing by Alison Williams)
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