SIDON, Lebanon — In this southern Lebanese city, Nareej Ramal is weeping in the arms of her father-in-law; the civil defense uniform her husband, Hussein Jaber, wore every day is draped around her shoulders like a final embrace.
Jaber, 32, a veteran first responder with Lebanon's interior ministry, was killed along with his colleague Ahmad Noura, 45, by an Israeli drone on May 12 in Nabatieh, a city in southern Lebanon, as they tried to rescue a man wounded in another strike moments earlier. His death came just days before Ramal and Jaber's first wedding anniversary.
The two men were the latest of over 100 first responders killed in Israeli airstrikes since the war between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah began on March 2. A ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon that began in April has not slowed Israeli attacks.
Israel has repeatedly accused Hezbollah of using ambulances and medical facilities for military purposes, without providing evidence, claims Lebanon's health ministry denies.
International law protects hospitals, rescue teams and ambulance crews. "But what we see now, no, it's not that," says Mona Boud Zeid, the director of Al Najdeh al-Shaabiyeh Hospital, which treats the wounded in southern Lebanon. From the hospital's location in Nabatieh, she can see the airstrikes.
"It's like what we see now in Gaza. It's the same. ... Maybe our hospitals, our nurses, our doctors will go through the same."
Gaza's health ministry says Israeli attacks killed more than 1,700 medical personnel and first responders during the war.
According to the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders, which has personnel at the Nabatieh hospital, Jaber and Noura were killed after rushing to the scene of an earlier strike. A third medic with them was injured. The aid group called the killing of the rescue workers "part of an alarming pattern."
Outside the hospital morgue on May 13, a dozen uniformed first responders kept a somber, silent vigil, waiting to lift the bodies into a waiting ambulance. In the background, colleagues and hospital workers sobbed.
Wrapped in white shrouds and covered with flowers, the bodies were transferred from Nabatieh to a burial site in Haret Saida, near Sidon. Their burials will be temporary because it's impossible to bury them in their own villages due to ongoing attacks. For many families, the ritual means enduring the pain of burial twice.
"They were never just colleagues," says team leader Abdallah Hallal, his voice breaking. "We have been together for more than 20 years," he says, speaking about Noura. "We saw a lot together. We lived through a lot together. No words can describe what we feel."
Hallal has spent more than 20 years as a search-and-rescue team leader, responding to emergencies and pulling survivors from the rubble on the frontlines of disaster and war.
The same image has been repeating throughout the war, in different scenes, the same tears of first responders.
At the end of April, helmets, stretchers and rescue vehicles stood motionless at the headquarters of first responders struck in earlier attacks, transformed into silent symbols of sacrifice in Tyre, a city in southern Lebanon. They formed the backdrop to a ceremony for Hadi Daher, Hussein Al-Sati and Hussein Ghadbouni, first responders killed while responding to a strike in the town of Majdal Zoun.
Hundreds of mourners gathered to pay tribute under the Lebanese anthem, songs, fireworks and grief, a farewell marked equally by honor and loss, while shadows stretched across the soil of the temporary graveyard.
The attacks during a ceasefire are a bitter reminder of how war devours the lives of everyone caught in the crossfire. Many of the dead have been civilians.
NPR contacted the Israeli military for comment about the Lebanese medics and did not hear back,
More than 380 people have been killed since the ceasefire began, turning what was meant to be a pause in violence into yet another chapter of mourning.
A few weeks earlier, relatives, friends and colleagues gathered in the home of Amal Khalil, a journalist for the Lebanese daily newspaper Al-Akhbar, who was killed in an Israeli strike in the southern town of Baisariyah. The attack also wounded her colleague, freelance photojournalist Zeinab Faraj.
Israeli attacks have meanwhile killed at least 2,896 people in Lebanon and displaced nearly a million people from the south since the war began, according to official Lebanese figures. Israel says Hezbollah's strikes since March have killed 18 soldiers and four civilians.
Even in grief, there is work to be done.
Ali Al Rida Hammoud, a member of the ambulance and paramedic teams in Nabatieh, puts on body armor as he prepares for another shift. Injured at the beginning of the war, he still carries the weight of what he has lived through on his shoulders — especially the memories of his fallen friends, among them Joud Suleiman. The son of Nabatieh's chief paramedic, Suleiman was killed in an Israeli strike in March alongside 24-year-old Ali Jaber while on their way to a rescue mission.
"I'm not a hero … but I'm not afraid," Hammoud says about the increasing danger. "I've witnessed so many things, but I believe I can protect my people, my country. Despite everything, you have to keep moving. Where should we go? This is our country."
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