The target was Jawad's uncle's home. The blast shook neighbouring buildings and threw Jawad's siblings at home to the ground. As their mother, Malak Meslmani, scrambled to help them up, she could think only of Jawad.
“I was pulling my children off the floor in the house, but as I was running to pick them up, I screamed, ‘Jawad,’” she said. ”My heart told me.”
Her son was instantly killed in the March 27 Israeli strike in Saksakieh. So was one of his cousins — so close they were more like brothers. Several other children were wounded.
This photo provided by Malak Meslmani shows her son, Jawad Younes, at a castle in Byblos town, north of Beirut, Lebanon, July 22, 2024
Jawad's uncle was also killed. He was an interior design engineer; Jawad wanted to be an engineer like him. Meslmani called him a civilian.
But like many Shia families in southern Lebanon, the family was loyal supporters of the militant group and political party Hezbollah, which formed in the 1980s to fight Israel’s occupation of the area.
Jawad and his cousin are among 172 children killed — of more than 2,100 people in all — by Israel's strikes in the six weeks of the escalated Israeli war in Lebanon.
Israel has struck alleged Hezbollah militants or officials in their homes without warning, frequently in areas far from the front line when they are with their families, in apartment buildings surrounded by uninvolved neighbours.
Of more than 2,000 people killed in Lebanon since Israel’s current war with Hezbollah began, 168 are children. Israel has often struck alleged Hezbollah militants or officials in their homes without warning. It’s frequently in areas far from the front line when they are with their families, in apartment buildings surrounded by uninvolved neighbors. AP
The families of children killed accuse Israel of committing war crimes because of the large number of civilian casualties.
Two Israeli civilians — both adults — and 13 soldiers have been killed in the current war with Hezbollah, according to figures from Israel. One of the civilians was killed by mistaken Israeli fire.
Under international law governing armed conflict, it's never legal to directly target civilians, but collateral damage — harm to civilians when striking a military target — is allowed if it is proportional to the anticipated military gains of any given strike.
The Israeli military told AP in a statement that its strikes follow the law, including “the principles of distinction, proportionality, and the taking of precautions.”
Charles Trumbull, an assistant University of South Carolina law professor who studies the law and ethics of armed conflict, said it's difficult to assess whether the proportionality threshold was met without knowing the strike targets and whether the military knew children were present.
Malak Meslmani, center, the mother of Jawad Younes, 11, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike, mourns over her son’s body during his funeral procession in Saksakieh village, south Lebanon, Saturday, March 28, 2026
“To the extent that they knew that children were likely to be harmed or killed in these strikes, and as an ethical matter, absolutely I think that should affect the calculus,” he said. “Just because certain strikes might not violate the law on conflict doesn’t mean that they’re not concerning or problematic or that they are morally justified.”
Children crushed under their own homes
At 2 a.m. March 12, Taline Shehab — who would have turned 4 last month — was sleeping when missiles tore into an apartment above hers in the family's building in Aramoun, about 20 km (12 miles) south of Beirut, causing it to collapse. Taline and her father died; her mother was critically wounded.
Aramoun is a religiously mixed area that was generally considered safe, though it had been targeted by airstrikes in the previous Israeli war in Lebanon in 2024.
Taline’s father, Mohamad, was a drone operator and video producer who often worked with the Lebanese army and on high-profile television productions. He and his wife, Nathalie, ran a fashion company; Taline appeared regularly on its social media.
“They were a very close family. Their daily life revolved around their daughter,” said Ali Shehab, Mohamad's brother.
Taline “was full of personality,” he said. “She was very attached to her father. She loved being around him," and "didn’t like to share him with anyone.”
He comforts himself with the thought that “maybe Mohammed and Taline, because they are so attached, God chose them both.”
Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta, who has worked extensively in Gaza and Lebanon and runs an initiative treating some of the most seriously war-wounded children at the American University of Beirut Medical Centre, said that, like Taline, most of the cases he has seen are “children being crushed underneath the rubble of their own homes.”
A lifetime shadowed by war and loss
Ten-year-old Zeinab al-Jabali used to tag along wherever her father went: the corner store, the mountains around their village in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.
Now, he sleeps in the Beirut hospital where doctors are treating his wife and three older daughters, all wounded in the strike that killed Zeinab.
War has shadowed most of Hassan al-Jabali’s life. In 1982, his brother — then 10, like Zeinab — was killed by an Israeli missile.
Al-Jabali made a living selling mouneh, or preserved foods such as raisins and dried herbs, and worked for his cousin's factory producing laban, or yogurt.
On March 5, al-Jabali’s wife and daughters were preparing for iftar, the meal ending the daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan, at his wife’s sister’s house when the airstrike hit it.
Al-Jabali acknowledged his brother-in-law — who was killed — “in the past was with the resistance,” referring to Hezbollah.
“But they struck him at home, in a house full of children, full of girls,” said al-Jabali, who heard the blast from elsewhere in the village and found a scene of carnage when he rushed to check on his family.
He said his wife still doesn’t know Zeinab is dead; he’s afraid the grief would endanger her recovery.
‘I remember everything’
In response to questions about the strikes that killed Jawad, Taline, and Zeinab, the Israeli military didn't give details about the intended targets beyond that "they were related to Hezbollah."
Many Lebanese have blamed Hezbollah for pulling their country into the war when it fired missiles across the border on March 2, two days after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran. But for others, the devastation from Israeli strikes has strengthened their support.
“We are now holding onto the resistance more than any time before,” said Meslmani, Jawad's mother.
Despite some Israeli army notices for residents in large swathes of southern Lebanon to flee, many in their town of Saksakieh stayed. Displaced people from farther south took refuge there. Life felt almost normal before the strike that killed Jawad.
Now, Meslmani visits his grave in a small cemetery overlooking a mountain vista, where she can hear warplanes roar overhead.
Hassan, the father of Zeinab al-Jabali, 10, who was killed on March 5, 2026, in an Israeli airstrike that hit her house in Libbaya village, east of Lebanon, speaks during an interview at the office of Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta Fund, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, March 19, 2026.
Since March 2, 600 children have been killed or injured by Israeli attacks in Lebanon, according to UNICEF.
The Israeli bombardment of residential buildings in Beirut on April 8 killed at least 303 people, including 33 children. Over 1,150 people were injured, 153 of them children.
A staggering 600 children have been killed or injured in Lebanon since the escalation of Israeli airstrikes on March 2.
Across the country, over 1.1 million people have been uprooted, including more than 390,000 children, many for the second, third, or even fourth time.
*This story was edited by Ahram Online.
Short link: