NYT: 'Nobody Won': Residents of a Lebanese City Return to Rubble and Sorrow

[Dennis Donovan]

NYT - ‘Nobody Won’: Residents of a Lebanese City Return to Rubble and Sorrow (Gift link)

Tens of thousands of people who had fled the city of Baalbek returned to bombed-out restaurants, flattened apartment buildings and many of the dead still buried under the rubble.



By Euan Ward
Reporting from Baalbek, Lebanon

Nov. 28, 2024, 4:23 p.m. ET

Hammers clanged against brick and metal as the residents of Baalbek set to work repairing their homes, desperate to restart their lives again.

A day after a cease-fire ended Lebanon’s deadliest war in decades, tens of thousands of people who fled the violence had already returned on Thursday to the hard-hit city in the country’s east.

Teenage girls snapped selfies in front of the ancient Roman temples. Excited young men on motorcycles performed doughnuts in the street, their back tires spinning up dust and shards of glass.

But after weeks of pounding Israeli airstrikes, the scars were not easy to ignore: bombed-out restaurants, flattened apartment buildings, trees snapped like twigs. And many of the dead were still buried under the rubble, residents said.

“I’m an old woman. I’m not affiliated with anyone. What did I do to deserve this?” said Taflah Amar, 79, as she swept debris from the front of her house, one of the few still standing on her street.

“I’ve been crying all day,” she said.



/snip

[brush]

1. WTH? Hasn't hostage release and ceasefire agreement been reached.

[Dennis Donovan]

2. That's the Gaza conflict

No hostages that I know of are involved in the Hezbollah end of the larger conflict.

[brush]

3. I was assiming the talks were covering the whole war.

Guess a certain warmonger can't help himself.