SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
An Israeli strike leveled an apartment building in central Beirut last night. Israel says it's targeting Hezbollah, and some strikes have killed senior Hezbollah officials. Others have left smoldering homes with dead civilians. NPR's Jane Arraf reports.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: It's the morning after an airstrike in Beirut's Busta neighborhood. Here on Fatalla Street, there's a barbershop, a minimarket, a cellphone store, and now a gaping hole filled with chunks of concrete and twisted metal, where an Israeli airstrike collapsed one of the apartment buildings. It left others leaning dangerously, showers of broken glass still falling.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY RUNNING)
ARRAF: A concrete-breaking machine punches through the collapsed walls while a bulldozer moves rubble into a pile. More than 20 people were found dead here and dozens more injured. Some are still missing.
FARAH: We still search for them, but we didn't find anyone.
ARRAF: That's Farah, a 22-year-old college student volunteering with emergency responders. Her uniform is covered in building dust. Everything else is, too - the plants, the trees, the mangled cars.
FARAH: The place we grew up in is completely destructed. We can't even know exactly why we're seeing this. All of the surrounding buildings are not safe anymore.
ARRAF: She didn't want to give her last name because of security fears. Some families are waiting on the sidewalks to be allowed into damaged departments to retrieve IDs and valuables. They know they won't be coming back soon. Israel has intensified its attacks throughout Lebanon over the past few weeks, including in central Beirut on what it says are Hezbollah targets. The people here say this is a residential area, and they received absolutely no warning of the airstrike. The Israeli military told NPR it had no comment on who or what it was targeting.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: War is something most Lebanese understand. The older generation has been through three wars with Israel and a civil war, among others. But Amin Kabani, a businessman, doesn't understand this.
AMIN KABANI: It's not fighting. Fighting is at border. It's killing people. They are not fighting us. They are killing us. Big difference between fighting and killing.
ARRAF: Many of Kabani's neighbors are Shia Muslim, the base of Hezbollah's support. Kabani is Sunni. But he says this attack has made him a supporter of Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah killed by Israel last month. And he says it has made him more determined to instill in his son resistance against Israel.
KABANI: I'm teaching him now to think like Hassan Nasrallah was thinking. (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: This morning, neighbors are still finding out who has survived...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: ...And who has not.
UNIDENTIFIED SHOP OWNER: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: "My friends who I had coffee with every morning - they were all killed," he says.
UNIDENTIFIED SHOP OWNER: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: "A baby girl, two months old - and my friend who I was sitting with every morning."
UNIDENTIFIED SHOP OWNER: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: That's a shop owner. He didn't want to give his name for fear of being targeted.
ALI NASSER: This is my home.
ARRAF: Ali Nasser, another business owner, said they all thought their apartment was safe because there was no Hezbollah presence there.
NASSER: Yeah, I was drinking coffee, and the explosion come in front of me, hot air and the pressure throw me away. Then the screams from the buildings, from the people, my family.
ARRAF: His grandfather built the apartment complex his family lives in next to the blast site. It has stood for 90 years. Now, he says, it's part of a battlefield in a war no one understands.
Jane Arraf, NPR News, Beirut. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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