Aoun and First Lady visit mother who lost family in Israeli strike
President Joseph Aoun and First Lady Nehmat Aoun on Friday visited Amani Bazzi Sharara, the mother who lost three of her children and her husband in an Israeli drone strike in Bint Jbeil on September 21.
The mother has been receiving treatment at the American University of Beirut Medical Center in Hamra.
“I must remain strong for the sake of my (wounded) daughter. What happened was very big and unacceptable. I have no one left except for my father and my siblings,” the mother told Aoun and the first lady in a distributed video.
“Entire Lebanon is with you, sympathizes with you and feels your pain,” the first lady responded.
“You will not be alone … You can depend on us in whatever you want,” the president added.
The woman’s husband and children were killed while heading from Bint Jbeil to the southern seaside city of Tyre in their car. Sam Bazzi, the children's maternal grandfather, said the family thought they were safe because they had no affiliation with Hezbollah.
"We're regular citizens and we don't belong to any group," Bazzi said. "And so we thought we had nothing to do with it and we were just living normally, coming and going."
The family was only a few hundred meters from Bazzi's house when a motorcycle passed by, and at the same moment, the Israeli drone struck. It killed the man, his twin 18-month-old son and daughter Hadi and Silan, 8-year-old daughter Celine, and the motorcyclist, a local man named Mohammed Majed Mroue.
The children's mother and her oldest daughter, Asil, survived but were seriously wounded. Bazzi, her face bruised and swollen, was carried on a stretcher through the crowd at the funeral of her husband and children on September 23.
After the strike, the Israeli military said it was targeting a Hezbollah militant, whom it did not name, and that he "operated from within a civilian population." It acknowledged that civilians were killed and said that it "regrets" the incident and was reviewing it.
Since the 2024 ceasefire took effect, Israel has continued to launch near-daily airstrikes in southern Lebanon. Israeli officials frequently say it is targeting Hezbollah militants or infrastructure. Hezbollah has only claimed firing across the border once since the ceasefire, but Israel says the militant group is trying to rebuild its capabilities.
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said after the strike that Shadi Sharara and his children were U.S. citizens, while family members told the AP that Sharara did not have U.S. citizenship but that his siblings and father live in the United States and are citizens. They said Sharara had applied to join them and recently received approval but was still waiting for visas.
A U.S. State Department official declined to comment on "personal details."
The European Union has condemned the strike and called for "full respect and implementation of the ceasefire agreement between Lebanon and Israel."
