Against the intermittent thump of distant Israeli airstrikes, the elderly couple sit on the floor of a brightly coloured classroom, sobbing.
Today they have fled their village in southern Lebanon under bombing, to this absurdly purple room covered in children’s scrawls. Neither of them can walk. They carry only a few bags between them.
Early this morning their youngest son, Mohamed, 38, a father of three and their carer, had been shredded in an Israeli airstrike on his car between Lebanon’s southern city of Tyre, where we are sitting, and their village.
The part time electrician had been shuttling between his wife and three children, who were staying in a displacement camp in the coastal city, and his elderly parents, who, too old and infirm to move, were sheltering in their village of Chaatiyeh. Both are in Israel’s evacuation zone.
By chance, Mohamed’s own nephew had been the ambulance driver on call in the area when Mohamed was killed. He found his uncle, his limbs severed, his car a charred wreck.
“Mohamed was looking after us, caring for us. Today the light went out of my life,” Iman, 78, the mother says, her voice a cracked shell.
Unable to continue speaking, her husband Daoud, 85, picks up the story.
“When they came and told me my son was killed, I collapsed. Totally collapsed.
“He has left three children with no father. My heart is burning. I feel like part of me died.”
Sitting perched on a child’s chair in this room, their new home for now, Fouad, 54, their eldest son, explains that his own child had been killed in the last war with Israel in 2024 while volunteering with the civil defence. This is the second time the family has been displaced to this school where we all sit now.
“What, after all this, is left for us from life? There is no one, nothing left,” he says, his face in his hands.
For nearly two weeks Israel has been pounding swathes of Lebanon, and in the south here pushing deeper into the war ravaged country, as it is locked in a fierce battle with the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
This war was triggered 12 days ago when Hezbollah fired at Israel in retaliation for massive US and Israeli strikes over Iran killing its supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
The conflict shows no signs of abating. Even as US President Donald Trump tries to suggest his offensive may be drawing to a close, there are fears the battle between Israel and Lebanon has only just begun.
In fact, in the last few days Israeli defence minister Israel Katz ordered the Israeli army to expand its operations, doubling the size of the forced evacuation orders in the south and even threatening to take Lebanese territory.
Lebanon’s president Joseph Aoun has reportedly been seeking talks with Israel to end the conflict. But senior Hezbollah officials told The Independent Lebanon has “no interest in negotiating with the enemy while it is under fire”.
They gave no timeline but said hostilities would keep going “with the aim of breaking the enemy’s will and preventing it from continuing its aggression”.
Across Lebanon, Israeli strikes have killed more than 770 people, and injured nearly 2,000 more, according to the Lebanese authorities.
They have also forced more than 800,000 people like Daoud and Iman to flee their homes, which according to the Norwegian Refugee Council, is roughly one in every seven people in the tiny country.
In Tyre, an ancient Phoenician city which lies about 20km north of border with Israel, strikes continue every day. As we arrive, Israel issues a new evacuation order and bombs Abbassieh, a district inside Tyre, which is strewn with towering mounds of chewed up concrete and snarled rebar.
Mohamed, 21, a local resident we meet by the iconic waterfront, says they also hit Abbassieh the day before, killing his father, critically wounding his mother, and partly destroying his home again.
“They bombed without warning. My mother has shrapnel in her brain and is in intensive care,” he says blankly.
“It’s really, really hard, but I’m one of the lucky ones. Other families have been entirely wiped out.”
His mother is being treated at Jabal Amel Hospital, which was badly damaged three days ago by a nearby Israeli strike.
There the hospital director, Dr Faraj Hamady, says they have been forced to expand their intensive care unit, which usually holds 27 patients, to accommodate the rush of critically injured. They are also running low on essential supplies.
He describes burying a colleague two days ago, a first responder killed in an apparent double tap attack, and having to amputate the leg of a seven-year-old. Some patients were arriving and dying before they could even be triaged, he continues.
“We do our best but in the end we cannot do everything,” he says.
Dr Hamady says that despite the hospital being inside the evacuation zone they will not leave, even amid reports from Israel that it is planning a massive ground invasion into Lebanon to uproot Hezbollah and claim more territory.
“If there is to be an evacuation, it will be a forced evacuation. We absolutely cannot leave,” he says grimly, showing images of the destruction.
“We will continue our services until the last pill, until the last oxygen supply, until we simply cannot do this any more.”
The other developing crisis in Tyre is the thousands of displaced people. Although it is being bombed itself, the city is supporting roughly 10,000 displaced people in schools, shelters and temporary accommodation, says Alwan Sharafeddine, the deputy mayor of the city.
Across Lebanon the cash strapped government has only been able to accommodate roughly 120,000 people as it scrambles to open shelters in schools and bring in more supplies. It has meant people have resorted to sleeping rough on the streets or in their cars under bombing.
In Tyre, at the local university, guarded by United Nations peacekeeping troops, volunteers frantically hand out food rations, mattresses and blankets.
“No one knows when this will end. I think it will continue for a long time and it will get harder, now the bombing is increasing step by step,” Sharafeddine adds.
At an iconic 1950s cinema and theatre in the heart of Tyre’s Christian quarter, owner Kassem Istanbouli says they are hosting 100 people across three spaces, and packing mattresses and beds into the stalls, stage and green rooms of all their cinemas.
He says among them are refugees from Syria and people from Bangladesh and Somalia, who struggle to find places in government run shelters that prioritise Lebanese citizens.
“Theatres in war and peace should remain open for the people. The goal of theatre is to support people. We practise cultural resistance and solidarity,” he adds.
Back in the school, Daoud and Iman are dazed as they set up mattresses on the floor of their new temporary home and come to terms with their grief.
“My message to the international community is stop killing humanity. They killed my son. He was an engineer. He was taking care of me even though he worried about his children. Isn’t it a crime to kill him?
“I feel like from now on I will keep dying inside.”
