Lebanese refugees return to their frontline village to mourn their fallen sons

On May 26, 2024, an Israeli drone strike killed two young Hezbollah soldiers in the centre of Houla, Lebanon. Their names were Hussein Salman Mustafa ("Haidar") and Tareq Bassam Awad ("Mujahed"). They were 20 and 24 years old.

Houla is a frontline village in south Lebanon. It was evacuated months ago, after a series of devastating Israeli airstrikes persuaded local authorities that the village was no longer safe.

On May 27, hundreds of villagers returned temporarily to their homes to attend the funeral for Mustafa and Awad. Dimitri Lascaris and Lebanese journalist Hadi Hoteit accompanied them.

After Lascaris and Hoteit attended the funeral, they inspected the site of the drone strike. There, they found remnants of the missile that killed the soldiers. They also inspected many of the buildings destroyed by Israeli airstrikes over the past seven months.

On the same day that Lascaris and Hoteit visited Houla, Hezbollah announced that, in retaliation for the killing of Mustafa and Awad, its forces had launched a drone attack on the headquarters of the Sahel Battalion of the Israeli military's 769th Brigade at "Beit Hillel".