The Israeli bombardment, which targeted roadways and restricted movement across the south, hampered rescue operations. Neighbours equipped with little more than flashlights, shovels, and their bare hands carried injured people away from the wreckage because emergency medical services were unable to reach the site. When a building collapses from a strike, concrete floors trap people in diminishing air pockets, requiring the use of specialised extraction equipment that can be further hindered by additional targeting. Due to these inevitable delays in professional medical care, injuries often worsen due to blood loss and shock.
A village elder said to me, “What can I say other than this is exactly what Israel is and has always been? Look around at all the blood and body parts. Children torn into pieces. This is Israel”.
The only two survivors were ten-year-old Zainab and eight-year-old Mustafa, who then became orphans with little support available to them. Zainab sustained severe trauma, including extensive burns across her lower limbs, requiring several operations. In the days that followed the attack, she sent anxious voice notes to her mother attempting to reassure her that she and Mustafa were safe and healthy. But Zainab eventually had to face the reality that her parents were already gone.
“Zainab found out, but Mustafa doesn't know, yet”, Dr Farhat revealed to me.
Sharing such news falls upon relatives who are ill-equipped to manage the psychological shock of grief — and, in Zainab’s case, orphanhood. Paediatric psychologists note that children in such extreme circumstances exhibit profound anxiety and defensive denial as their minds struggle to process the event. Dr Farhat described Zainab’s mental state:
Zainab had a really hard time; I mean, Zainab screamed, then she went quiet, and then she started asking difficult, existential questions. We don't even know how to describe their psychological state — they are completely disoriented right now. One minute they cry, the next they laugh, then they ask questions, then they go silent, deep in shock.
The oscillation between acute distress, cascading emotional numbness, and erratic behavioural responses is a classic clinical manifestation of severe post-traumatic shock disorder in children. According to recent data published by UNICEF, an estimated 770,000 children across Lebanon have experienced severe psychological distress due to Israeli attacks and mass forced displacement. When an entire universe is dismantled in a single night, the child's internal map of safety is entirely destroyed, leaving them in a state of perpetual hypervigilance and cognitive disorientation. Zainab's progression from screaming to profound silence reflects the nervous system's attempt to shut down in the face of overwhelming emotional input. The existential questions she poses challenge adult caregivers who are themselves mourning the loss of 12 family members and trying to maintain their own composure in a hospital room filled with antiseptic and the hum of medical monitors.
The individual names of the victims emerged gradually, as relatives tallied the losses that had stripped a bloodline of three successive generations in one catastrophic blow dealt by Israel. “Just as Israel goes into our villages and uproots the olive trees, it is trying to uproot our people, and that is why the family was killed”, said Dr Farhat.
The broader implications of such strikes extend far beyond the immediate casualty statistics, touching every aspect of communal survival in southern Lebanon. When multi-generational households are erased overnight, the social fabric of rural villages is torn apart, leaving ageing relatives without caregivers, communities without their cultural memory keepers, and children with layers of trauma that they will be forced to carry for the remainder of their lives. The normalisation of Israeli attacks and even mass casualties in southern Lebanon has created an atmosphere where entire families are reduced to brief news bulletins, while the survivors are left to navigate bureaucratic, medical, and psychological labyrinths with minimal to no institutional support. In Kfar Rumman, the empty plot where the multi-story home once stood remains a permanent scar for the people of the village, marking the spot where 14 human lives, spanning three distinct generations, were extinguished by a deliberate Israeli attack while they slept in their beds.
The effects of these strikes stretch beyond the casualties, disrupting survivors’ community networks and social ties. In Kfar Rumman, the site of the Farhat home is now where multiple generations of the family died.
In the following video that Dr Farhat shared online, she said she does not want any other children to endure what Zainab and Mustafa have had to endure. “We want to tell the world who they were. We won’t allow anyone to simply say Israel killed six children. These children played, and laughed, and loved, and each one of them had a story”.