The head of civil defense in Tyre spoke about the casualties resulting from the attacks in Lebanon
Ali Safiuddin, head of the civil defense service in Tyre, Lebanon, is the subject of the Al Jazeera Originals short film *Those We Could Not Save*. In the film, he describes the work of rescue workers in southern Lebanon, where, despite the ceasefire, bombing and shelling continue near the so-called “Yellow Line”—an area Israel refers to as a security zone.
Safiuddin said that after the ceasefire, strikes took place in Al-Mansour and Majdal—municipalities in the Tyre district. Al Jazeera notes that the Israeli military is not directly targeting Tyre, the largest city in southern Lebanon, but fighting continues on its outskirts and in an area extending approximately 10 kilometers into Lebanese territory.
During the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, an Israeli strike hit a civil defense center where Safiuddin was sheltering his wife and one-year-old daughter, Lynn. The girl was killed. The rescuer said that this loss still affects him and motivates him to continue his work. After the ammonium nitrate explosion at the Port of Beirut in 2020, he and his colleagues pulled a girl about 14 years old from under the rubble—after 18 hours of digging by hand beneath three stories of debris.
For more breaking news, follow the UA.News Telegram channel.
Safiuddin’s 18-year-old son, Hussein, also serves in the civil defense. The commander refers to all the subordinates he has worked with over the years as his sons. On April 28, in the village of Majdal Zoun, three members of his team—Hussein Gadbuni, Hussein Sati, and Hadi Daher—were killed in a double Israeli strike.
According to the UN, at least 135 emergency responders and medical personnel have been killed in Lebanon since early March. Safiuddin explained that due to the risk of follow-up strikes, his team has changed its operating procedure: one ambulance drives to the site of the strike, while another waits outside. Rescuers are using the current lull in strikes north of the “yellow line” to rebuild the civil defense center, which was also hit in 2006, Al Jazeera English reports.
