A British woman broke down as she recounted how five members of her family were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon.
Sana Chamseddin spoke of her guilt at fleeing to the UK as she touched down in Heathrow Airport today clutching her son, leaving other members of her family in ‘unsafe places’.
Her uncle, his wife and his three daughters, all in their twenties, were killed when their home when the Lebanese city of Tyre was bombed by the Israel Defence Forces.
Two of the daughters were doctors and one was an engineer who was 10 days away form getting married, said Mrs Chamseddin.
She wept as she recalled: ‘I was talking with my uncle over WhatsApp, he told me that it’s okay, it’s not going to bomb him, but we lost the connection when they bombed around us.’
Mrs Chamseddin and her husband are British citizens and returned to London with their sons, two-month-old Zien and one-year-old Jawad.
She explained: ‘On Monday morning we wake up as a big bomb [hit] just beside our house, and we saw on the news that they said another round [of attacks] will start in one hour, so we didn’t take it seriously because we don’t fight – we are normal civilians.’
After losing signal with her uncle, Mrs Chamseddin and her family travelled to Tyre to check on their loved ones.
‘When we arrived after 10 hours on the road we found out that he didn’t make it,’ she cried. ‘Me and my husband feel very guilty to come here [to England] and [leave] our family in unsafe places.’
Mrs Chamseddin added her uncle ‘was the perfect person, he liked to live and to talk all the time’.
Her husband, biochemical engineer Abbas Chamseddin, revealed photographs of the family and said: ‘Look at this smile, this is the future of Lebanon – they’re killing the future of Lebanon, look at the smile, this is what they kill.’
Footage showed fires blazing inside multiple flat blocks and Sana’s uncle and his family lived in one of them, Mr Chamseddin said.
He said the family fled to Beirut Airport as bombs fell around them.
‘This morning was the end of the world,’ he added. ‘People running in the street, they left their homes, sleeping in the street, just because they want to be in a safe place, because they left their home in the night.
‘We are on our way to the airport [and] the taxi suddenly would go this way, suddenly go this way, and why? Because there were bombs everywhere and we see them with our eyes.’
One picture showed dust on Zien’s face which Mr Chamseddin said was ‘from the bombs on the way to the airport’.
Video taken from Beirut Airport by the father showed smoke rising above nearby buildings.
Another family who landed at Heathrow on Saturday, who did not want to be identified, said they have not slept or eaten in a week as they watched destruction ‘like something out of a horror movie’ night after night.
They took the same flight as the Chamseddins and said they had nowhere to go once they left Heathrow.
The mother, a 45-year-old who grew up in Chelsea, said: ‘We ran away with nothing, we just left our belongings – we didn’t sleep all night.’
She said travelling to Beirut Airport ‘was a scene from a film that you’d see in the cinema’, adding ‘I couldn’t believe it – red smoke on the right, on the left, red smoke, the smell of burning.
‘Yesterday we were in Beirut when they bombarded this area where they said they bombarded the head of Hezbollah, we were there – the sound was horrific.’
She said she counted 10 blasts and that her apartment was shaking, adding: ‘I have a small apartment on the 13th floor, [it was] absolutely terrifying, worse than an earthquake.
‘They didn’t use drones, they used planes, there are civilians there, there are innocent kids, innocent women.’
She landed at Heathrow with her daughters, aged 21 and 10, and her 12-year-old son. They all live in the Barbir Bridge area of Beirut.
Her father, 70, and mother, 60, were also with them having fled the Mathaf area of the city.
The eldest daughter said: ‘It was really horrific, we were terrified, very scared, it was like something from a horror movie honestly.
‘I can still hear the sounds, we haven’t slept for a week, especially yesterday night, and yesterday evening, all throughout the night just constant bombings, all the way through the night – every few minutes they would bomb before sunrise, then they stopped a bit.
‘There are a lot of people that are very displaced, sleeping in the streets – we’ve seen it with our eyes as when we were leaving today to the airport, the roads when we were going to the airport, it was hell.
‘You don’t know when anywhere is safe.’
The young woman, who did not want to be identified, was due to finish a mathematics degree in December but said she will not be able to because of the attacks.
She said a 20-year-old student at her university was killed in an Israeli strike when he returned to his university dormitory in Dahiyeh to collect some clothes and added that many of her friends and family members have been displaced.
More than 720 people have been killed in Lebanon since the conflict escalated on Monday, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
The United Nations says the number displaced by the conflict from southern Lebanon has more than doubled, with more than 211,000 people affected.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel in support of Hamas after it stormed into Israel on October 7, sparking the Israel-Hamas war.
Top Israeli officials have threatened to repeat the destruction of Gaza in Lebanon if the Hezbollah fire continues.
The IDF has been approached for comment.