Some weep while others stare blankly ahead at a makeshift cemetery in Lebanon's evacuation zone

 

Some weep while others stare blankly ahead at a makeshift cemetery in Lebanon's evacuation zone

More than 800 people in Lebanon have been killed since Israel launched strikes against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants, the Lebanese Health Ministry has said. Hundreds of thousands have also fled their homes since Israel issued mass evacuation orders.

The road into Tyre is lined with the yellow and green flags of Hezbollah. Billboards are filled with the faces of fighters who lost their lives in the many battles with Israel over the years.

We're in the evacuation zone, the area of south Lebanon that Israel has told everyone to leave. And it's not long before we see the mounting human cost of the latest conflict this community is engulfed in.

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A group of mourners is gathered by the side of the road at a temporary cemetery. Huddled around makeshift memorials, some weep, some hug, others stare blankly ahead. They're here to bury four men that they say were medics and social workers. They were not, they say, fighters.


Ehsan Dbouk, a cleric for the group, says they've had to use this site because the men's hometowns are no longer safe.

"We can't bury our martyrs in their villages on the frontline," he says. "We are dealing with an enemy that doesn't distinguish between killing fighters and killing civilians."

That enemy, they claim, represents an existential threat. Israel frames the Iran-backed group, proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK, in exactly the same way. Neither side is showing any sign of backing down.

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