‘No life left there’: The suburbs bearing the brunt of Israel’s strikes on Beirut

The air strike that killed the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah shook the earth for hundreds of metres in every direction.

A few blocks away, in the Beirut suburb known as the Dahieh, Mehdi Moussawi thought his own building was falling down.

From his balcony, the 45-year-old taxi driver and his wife Zahraa – who asked that their names be changed for this story – watched as a thick blanket of smoke and dust enveloped everything around them. In the distance, they could hear debris raining down, and overhead the familiar buzz of an Israeli drone.

The drones had become so common over Dahieh in the previous few days that they barely noticed them anymore. A majority Shia suburb in the south of Beirut, Dahieh was once again under Israel’s watchful eye; its more than half a million residents again under threat of death from above.