Zeinab Faraj, a freelance Lebanese photographer and video journalist, described being wounded in an Israeli strike that killed her colleague Amal Khalil, recounting the hours she spent waiting for rescue as additional strikes hit the area. Faraj spoke to The Associated Press from the Beirut hospital where she is recovering, describing a sequence that began on Wednesday in the village of al-Tiri, about 8 kilometers from the Israel border.
Faraj said she and Khalil were traveling to cover the post-ceasefire situation in southern Lebanon, five days after a fragile truce was implemented between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. She said the pair were driving behind a relative in al-Tiri when Khalil, holding her phone out the window to film, watched an Israeli strike hit the car in front of them.
After the first impact, Faraj said the women pulled over and moved to the roadside, staying down as a drone remained in the sky overhead. About an hour later, she said a second strike hit Khalil’s car next to where they had taken cover, and Khalil was left with wounds that included burns after the targeted car caught fire.
Faraj said they were able to seek shelter behind a nearby shop by crawling through a metal shutter. She said she and Khalil were then able to contact family and colleagues, and she described Khalil as trying to reassure her loved ones even as Faraj said Khalil’s condition worsened, including internal bleeding that Faraj said she later realized she had not previously been able to fully assess.
Faraj said she began to drift off as contacts with multiple groups began in an effort to secure safe passage for evacuation, involving the Lebanese Red Cross, the Lebanese army, UNIFIL, and the Israeli military. She said Khalil then hugged her and urged her not to be left alone, telling Faraj: “Zeinab, don’t leave me alone,” as Faraj described waking with the knowledge that Khalil was in bad condition.
Faraj said she was half asleep when she heard the sound of a missile falling and that a third strike hit the building where they had sheltered. She said she was thrown out of the shop by the blast, while Khalil was trapped inside, and Faraj described being in and out of consciousness as she called to her father, shouting, “Baba, I’m here, come and help me.”
She said a rescue team arrived and pulled Faraj from the rubble and evacuated her as well as the bodies of two people killed in the strike on the first car. Lebanon’s health ministry said in a statement that the Israeli military opened fire on a Red Cross ambulance that arrived to rescue Khalil, forcing it to turn back, while Israel’s military said people in the village had violated the ceasefire and that the incident was under review.
Faraj said she did not realize until hours later that Khalil had not been rescued along with her. She said Khalil’s body was ultimately pulled from the rubble shortly before midnight, after the Lebanese army, civil defense and the Lebanese Red Cross received clearance and reached the scene.
In explaining how long it took, Faraj said she believes the outcome could have been different if rescuers had reached Khalil sooner. She also said she believes the journalists were deliberately targeted, adding that Khalil had previously said she received threatening messages from an Israeli number during her coverage in southern Lebanon during the previous 2024 Israel-Hezbollah war.
Faraj’s account also comes as international observers have focused on the safety of journalists in the Israel-Hezbollah war. The Committee to Protect Journalists said an Israeli army spokesperson’s social media post reposting a video from Al-Akhbar was “incitement,” and the group said it saw “no evidence” that Khalil or Faraj were directly participating in hostilities, calling for an international investigation.
The latest Israel-Hezbollah conflict began March 2, when Hezbollah fired a barrage of missiles over the border and Israel responded with widespread bombardment and a ground invasion into Lebanon. Even after the truce, both sides have continued to launch strikes, and Israeli forces have maintained an occupation of a border strip extending about 10 km into Lebanon as a buffer zone, according to the AP report.