The Missing Bride of Anqoun

On April 8th, during a brief period of optimism following a ceasefire announcement, a series of Israeli air strikes—later called "Black Wednesday"—devastated Beirut, including the Hamad Building in Ain el-Mreisseh. The strikes, which Israel claimed did not violate the ceasefire, killed and injured numerous civilians, among them members of the Abboud family who had fled their hometown of Anqoun to escape the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah. The attack shattered the day's calm and became the deadliest single day of the conflict.

In Beirut’s coastal neighborhood of Ain el-Mreisseh, many of the residents of the Hamad Building, a seven-story apartment block, were preparing lunch. The building was one street back from the city’s corniche, a wide promenade filled with joggers, children riding bicycles, and fishermen casting lines into a serene Mediterranean. It was a little after 2 P.M. on April 8th. One of the three apartments on the first floor was home to Samih Hassan, a ninety-two-year-old retiree who had served in the Lebanese security forces, and his wife, Amal. The couple had no children together, but their apartment, a two-bedroom, had become crowded in recent weeks: Amal’s sister Ibtisam had moved in, as had two nieces, Malak and Zahra Abboud. An Ethiopian domestic worker, Tesfanesh, also lived there. The Abboud sisters came from Anqoun, a hillside town situated above the coastal city of Sidon, which is about an hour south of Beirut. They had left Anqoun in mid-March, fleeing the latest war that had erupted, days earlier, between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite paramilitary group. An Israeli evacuation order had been issued for an adjacent town, and they worried that it might soon extend to theirs. The sisters had taken refuge in Amal’s apartment before, during a previous war. Their parents, Qassem and Hanan, remained in Anqoun. Qassem ran a money-transfer-and-currency-exchange franchise, and also an office that provided internet service to the town. Both of his daughters were single and lived at home. Malak, thirty-eight, was her father’s right hand, helping manage his businesses. Zahra was completing a master’s in biochemistry. She was twenty-seven, but her father liked to tell people that she was younger, because, he said, “she’s my baby.” She took shifts in a pharmacy and tutored students, but was having trouble finding a permanent job. Like many in Lebanon, her plans and ambitions had been put on hold by the hostilities. On the morning of April 8th, there was reason to believe that the waiting might end. For the first time in weeks, Beirut felt optimistic, a calm that seemed reflected in the weather. The sky was clear, the sea flat and bright, the horizon unmarred by the vertical smoke of air strikes. It was the first day of a ceasefire between Iran, Israel, and the United States, which, according to the Pakistani negotiators who had brokered the deal, included Lebanon, too. The geography of displacement immediately began to shift. More than 1.2 million people had fled Israeli bombardment in southern Lebanon and other parts of the country. For weeks, many had slept in cars, classrooms, and makeshift shelters, and now they started moving home again. Traffic thickened along the roads leading out of Beirut. By early afternoon, however, the calm had been shattered by almost two dozen Israeli air strikes. Israeli officials said that the attacks, some of which were preceded by evacuation orders, did not violate the ceasefire, which they insisted did not include Lebanon. Then, around 2:15 P.M., some fifty Israeli warplanes launched a ferocious ten-minute barrage of strikes on more than a hundred sites across the country—an operation that Israel called Eternal Darkness. There were no warnings. What had begun as a day of anticipated reprieve would later be referred to in Lebanon as Black Wednesday. It was the deadliest day of the war. In the Hamad Building, Amal and Tesfanesh were in the kitchen, frying a dish of chicken liver. In a bedroom, Zahra was preparing for the afternoon prayer. Malak, Ibtisam, and Samih were in the dining room, waiting to eat. In the lounge room, beige sofas bordered a deep-red Oriental rug worn smooth in places by years of use. Fading photographs of Samih in uniform lined the walls. Neighbors would later say that they did not hear the approach of the weaponry that hit the lower floors of the Hamad Building. Security cameras mounted outside a bicycle-rental shop at street level captured the aftermath. First, the frame filled with dust. Household items, including an air-conditioner, shot outward, slamming into the building across the narrow street. Moments later, dazed residents staggered out as others rushed in to help. Mohammad Bacha, a thirty-year-old real-estate agent, was one of the helpers. He had been jogging along the seaside promenade, about a kilometre away, when he saw gray smoke rising over Ain el-Mreisseh, where he lived. “I looked left and right,” he said. “Beirut was black. It was covered in black smoke.” He ran back, knowing that his brother, who also lived in the neighborhood, would be there, either injured or trying to assist those who were. He found him at the Hamad Building, pulling survivors from the debris. In the wreckage of the first floor, Bacha saw a young Syrian man, who he knew did not live in the building, use a fire extinguisher to douse Samih Hassan, who was badly burned and calling for help. The force of the blast had thrown Samih through what had been a wall and into a neighboring apartment. He was rushed to a hospital. On the floor nearby lay Amal’s sister, Ibtisam, burned and unresponsive. Bacha carried her body outside. Another man brought out Malak, injured but alive. “I ran to the corniche and stopped a passing car,” he told me. “The ambulances hadn’t yet arrived.” Zahra was nowhere to be seen. Her aunt Amal and Tesfanesh were believed to be trapped beneath the rubble of the kitchen. As Bacha moved toward the second floor, he heard the building begin to crack. A wall had buckled at a sharp angle. “Get out ” he shouted. Fifteen minutes after the air strike, half of the Hamad Building collapsed. Concrete dust clotted the air, turning the afternoon dark. Bacha switched on the light of his cellphone, and, with others, continued searching, following traces of blood on broken concrete and stone. Qassem Abboud was at work in Anqoun when the bombs fell. His brother-in-law, a bachelor in his mid-fifties who lived in Ain el-Mreisseh, called him in tears. He told him that the Hamad Building had been hit and that the side in which the family lived had caved in. “I dropped everything,” Qassem said. He did not own a car, so he ran to a rental office, took a vehicle, picked up his wife, and sped north. As they drove, they called their daughters. At first, they heard the calls ring. Then the lines went dead. Qassem phoned the elder of his two sons, Ali, who, like his uncle, Samih, had joined the Lebanese security forces. Ali lived north of Beirut. He had gone home for lunch and was preparing to return to duty. He was praying when his phone began ringing repeatedly. He reached Ain el-Mreisseh before his parents. The April 8th strikes ravaged a range of sites across the country. In Beirut, the charred remains of employees were found inside a branch of a well-known nut-and-confectionery store situated on a street usually choked with traffic. In residential neighborhoods, families were buried beneath the debris of their own homes. In the Bekaa Valley, an attack hit a cemetery during a funeral. Operation Eternal Darkness “was based on weeks of precise intelligence and careful planning,” an Israeli Army spokesman said, in a video posted to social media, adding that the targets included Hezbollah command centers and missile infrastructure. Members of Hezbollah were moving out of their “usual strongholds,” the spokesman claimed, and into other areas. The bombings continued into the evening, including on a residential building in the capital, where a poet and her husband were among the dead. Lebanon’s Ministry of Health reported that at least three hundred and fifty-seven people were killed, with more than twelve hundred wounded. The current war is the second between Hezbollah and Israel in less than two years. The first began in 2023, when Hezbollah opened a “support front” in solidarity with Hamas, after its October 7th attacks. Large swaths of southern Lebanon and northern Israel emptied out, as missiles and rockets fell nearly every day for almost fourteen months. More than four thousand Lebanese and a hundred and twenty Israelis were killed. A truce was reached in November of 2024. During the truce, Israel killed more than three hundred and fifty Lebanese, a number that comprised Hezbollah members as well as civilians, including children. Hezbollah launched one attack—on an Israeli military outpost in Lebanese territory, which resulted in no casualties—but otherwise held its fire. That ended on March 2nd of this year, when the group launched half a dozen rockets in retaliation for the Israeli-American assassination of its patron, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and, it said, “in defense of Lebanon.” That same day, the Lebanese government proclaimed Hezbollah’s armed wing illegal—an unprecedented move. For more than three decades, Hezbollah’s arsenal had been considered part of the country’s national defense. But not anymore. “We announce a ban on Hezbollah’s military activities and restrict its role to the political sphere,” Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said. “We declare our rejection of any military or security operations launched from Lebanese territory outside the framework of legitimate institutions.” Hezbollah repudiated the announcement, saying that it would keep its weapons. Its leaders have repeatedly contended that their resistance to occupation is protected under international law and the Lebanese constitution, if not under the new domestic policy. Throughout the ceasefire, Israel had maintained control of five newly seized hilltops in southern Lebanon, in addition to other disputed territory it has held for decades. For many Lebanese, this war feels more difficult than the last. International attention has shifted to the broader conflict with Iran, and humanitarian aid has been limited. The country has yet to recover from the previous war’s losses: of life, of income, of infrastructure, of territory. The World Bank estimates that reconstruction efforts from that war will cost eleven billion dollars. Israel now occupies sixty-eight villages in southern Lebanon, amounting to roughly ten per cent of the country’s physical territory. Israel is razing and looting homes and has vowed to prevent hundreds of thousands of residents, predominantly Shiites, though also members of other religious communities, from returning. Some Israeli ministers are now calling for the establishment of settlements in southern Lebanon. The possibility of long-term displacement is exacerbating social tensions, in part because Israel has struck mixed sectarian areas where Shiite families have taken refuge, claiming that they have ties to Hezbollah. Many, though not all, Shiites support Hezbollah, as do Lebanese from other religious groups. In addition to its military wing, Hezbollah has representatives in Parliament, ministers in the cabinet, and operates schools, hospitals, a financial institution, and an ambulance service. Recently, in Christian villages in the south, residents said that they were warned by Israeli forces to expel their displaced Shiite neighbors or risk being attacked. Some landlords have refused to rent to Shiites altogether, and certain municipal governments have required background checks and restricted visitors. Many Lebanese have nonetheless taken in the displaced, despite the risks. Most of the residents of the Hamad Building had lived there for decades. The building itself has been around for seventy years; a man in his nineties, who lived nearby and told me that his roots in the area were so deep “they reach the sea,” said that he remembered the construction of the building when he was young. It stood among a cluster of dilapidated but still elegant homes with soaring ceilings, trifora windows, and intricately carved balustrades. Across the street was a sandstone mosque, with pointed arches, built in 1887. One afternoon, I visited Aref Chkeir, the local mukhtar, in his office, a few streets away from the site of the strike. He