Ceasefire Trip: Two Journalists Killed and Rescued in Lebanon

A ceasefire agreed in mid-April was meant to let residents return to flattened villages in southern Lebanon, and two journalists set out to document what remained.

Zeinab Faraj, a 21-year-old photojournalist, traveled on 22 April with Amal Khalil, a 42-year-old newspaper reporter, to photograph the aftermath of a month of airstrikes. Khalil had contacted Faraj after seeing her work on social media, and the two had collaborated on several assignments. Faraj was freelancing while finishing a degree in radio and TV. "I had absolutely no sense of fear," Faraj says of the trip.

The pair drove toward al-Tiri that afternoon in a convoy with Ali Nabil Bazzi, 27, a Bint Jbeil municipal official, and Mohammed Hourani, 37, a friend of the mayor. The group had met by chance earlier at Tebnine governmental hospital, a location regarded as relatively safe. Bazzi had a marriage contract to sign that evening but joined the trip anyway. Faraj, who grew up in nearby Bint Jbeil, was recalling her childhood as they drove.

Faraj says she did not hear the missile. She heard Khalil scream and saw the car ahead burning. The women exited their vehicle; Faraj says she saw the bodies of Bazzi and Hourani torn apart. Drones then arrived, flying low. Faraj says one came close enough to her face that she tried to cover it, and it rose whenever she did. Emergency services repeatedly promised help was coming, assurances that worked "like an anaesthetic," she says. A paramedic told them to drive back up the road because ambulances could not reach them, but their car was struck by a missile as they tried to get in. Both women were thrown backward, and Khalil wrapped her arms around Faraj. They took shelter in a house where Khalil, bloodied on her face, hand and leg, could not move. Faraj sent her sister a final message before her phone died: "There's no hope left. Forgive me."

A missile then struck the building. Faraj woke under rubble, barely able to breathe. Paramedics pulled her out while drones returned to the area; in the ambulance she repeatedly mistook the engine for a drone. At the hospital, nurses first spoke about Khalil, then went quiet. Khalil is believed to have died about an hour before paramedics were allowed back after rescuing Faraj. The Israeli military said it had identified saboteurs violating the ceasefire. Human rights groups called the attack a war crime and noted the military received repeated messages asking it to allow a rescue while the women sheltered. A week earlier, an Israeli military spokesperson had shared a video of Khalil published by her newspaper and labelled it "terrorist media," and Khalil had received death threats from Israeli numbers.

Faraj is preparing to return to university. She still struggles to walk properly and has a visibly injured hand, while a facial injury has affected the movement of one eyebrow. "I was always on the move. I lost that," she says. She wakes at night screaming, and drones and warplanes put her on edge. She says she is haunted by the sight of Hourani on the ground, his eyes open and looking at her.