The business owners arrived one by one, but all were united in their mission on a chilly December morning: Salvage anything from the pulverized market in this hillside city in southern Lebanon.
A photo studio operator and his son trudged through debris and twisted metal to recover dust-coated negatives and camera lenses. A clothes shop proprietor dragged a garbage bag holding leggings, retrieved from under mangled rebar. And an optical store owner stood atop crushed concrete slabs that were once the rooftop of his business’s building.
“Everything is gone,” said Raed Mokaled, 58, who, along with the eyeglasses business, co-owned a gold and watches store in the same building with his brother. “An orange ball of fire took out everything.”
Israel conducted intense air raids and then began a ground invasion into south Lebanon in late September to retaliate against Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group that had been attacking it in solidarity with Hamas after the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks on Israel. A fragile 60-day truce, signed in November, has suspended the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
