From Ceasefire to Fire Belt: A Firsthand Account From Nabatieh

Location: Al-Najda el-Shaabiyya (Martyr Hekmat el-Amin) Hospital, Nabatieh, Lebanon.

At 9 p.m., Fakih sent us his first voice note from where he was stationed at the Nabatieh first responders’ meeting point near the hospital:

I didn’t move. I was injured.

I was at the hospital entrance, and there was an overwhelming number of paramedics. The fire belt was neverending. They let us into the emergency room, and everyone rushed inside. We all just stood there, not understanding what was happening.

Then the rescue teams got moving. I didn’t go out, but I documented the arrival of the ambulances. Thank God, there aren’t too many casualties. There are two martyrs and a martyred child in Arabsalim. Those were the ones who made it here. But in the heart of Nabatieh…

Some women were saying: “We were making lunch, and now it’s gone.” It took me back to the most difficult day of my life last year. A really, really, really terrible day.

End of recording.

Later, still at the station, Fakih sent us the second voice note:

At 2 a.m., a very intense airstrike hit the Kfar Tebnit area in Upper Nabatieh. The explosion looked like the mushroom cloud of a nuclear bomb. We were still awake.

I was sitting with a group of paramedics from different associations when reports started circulating that Iran and the United States might have reached an agreement to stop the war or implement a ceasefire. News and statements continued until dawn, when a ceasefire was confirmed. 

By then, it was 5:30 a.m. We still hadn’t slept. I woke some of the younger paramedics, and told them that it seemed the war had stopped. We made coffee and sat on the balcony near the al-Najda el-Shaabiyya Hospital, waiting to see what would come next. Civilian cars started arriving, many with mattresses strapped on their roofs. There was lots of movement. An hour passed in heavy traffic. 

At around 6:30 or 7 a.m., I went out into the street to get a sense of the situation. Movement had increased. By around 8 a.m., the prime minister of the entity announced that there was no ceasefire.

That’s when things became confusing. People who had started returning began to turn back, and the flow of movement reversed. We waited, but nothing was clear. Then fighter jets and drones intensified overhead, escalating into a series of extremely intense airstrikes.

I was standing at the entrance of the emergency room. We were warned that everyone needed to go inside the hospital because there had been a strike on Tablan Street in Kfar Rumman, about 700 to 800 meters away, another on the center of Nabatieh, and another strike in Kfar Joz. The series of airstrikes continued, unabated. There were more than 20 strikes — a fire belt.

None of the paramedics could process what was happening. There were more than 40 or 50 paramedics from different organizations. Calls kept coming in reporting strikes, and ambulances moved in and out continuously.

Because many cars in Nabatieh had been targeted over the past three days, I limited my movement and stayed close to the hospital, afraid of being targeted. The night before, at around 11 p.m., a motorcycle and a truck were targeted in Kfar Rumman, so I stayed put and documented the ambulances as they arrived.

Women and elderly men stepped out of the vehicles. One woman sat next to me and said she had just prepared lunch, but it was all gone and they hadn’t eaten. She was covered in dust from head to toe. The children, too. A girl wearing a veil had blood seeping through her headscarf.

Two hours after these strikes, the city was almost completely quiet. There was no movement. Paramedics stayed at their stations, and that’s how the day continued. We couldn’t sleep. It was one of the worst days of the 2026 war. It took me back to November 16, 2024 — the day of the fire belt that targeted Nabatieh municipality and its surroundings.

If you listen to what people are saying, the tension is very high, especially since we were expecting a ceasefire and were suddenly hit by a fire belt. So the shock was even greater. We’re still at our stations. There’s no movement. The city is quiet again, with fighter jets occasionally flying overhead.

Personally, my morale was very low. That day felt terrible, especially because my wife was at our home in Beirut, and strikes landed close to our neighborhood. The Red Cross pulled a child out from under the rubble after a strike on Arabsalim, which was extremely difficult and traumatic to witness.

That’s it… I don’t know if there’s anything else to say.

End of recording.