The Israel killing of 23 people at a Christian-majority village in northern Lebanon Tuesday closely resembled how Tel Aviv has conducted its genocidal war in Gaza, issuing evacuation orders for specific areas before targeting the displaced population.
Elie Alwan sheltered a displaced Shiite family from southern Lebanon in his peaceful village, believing they would be safe – instead, an Israeli airstrike killed them, destroyed his home and injured his mother.
The Oct. 14 strike on the north Lebanon village of Aito in the Zgharta district killed 23, including at least 12 women and two children, many of them displaced from south Lebanon, according to the official National News Agency.
"It's a massacre that happened in my home," said 42-year-old Alwan.
The attack, which wiped out an entire family, was the first time the mountain village has been struck by Israel, which has mostly targeted Shiite-dominated Hezbollah strongholds.
The four-storey building where Alwan lived was destroyed and the displaced family whom he had known for 15 years were wiped out.
"They were a decent family," said the father of four, blood stains still visible on the rubble-strewn ground beside him.
"I welcomed them as friends."
Michel Moawad, a deputy opposed to Hezbollah and a native of the region, claimed the strike targeted a member of the pro-Iranian group.
A security official, speaking anonymously to AFP, said the strike occurred just after a man arrived by car at the building to visit the displaced family.
'Learned our lesson'
As excavators worked to clear the mountain road a day after the strike, the stench of corpses hung in the air and human remains lay in a ditch at the side of the road.
A statue of Saint Charbel Makhlouf, a Christian Maronite was intact but surrounded by destruction.
The strike sparked alarm across Lebanon's north and prompted a call for an independent and thorough investigation from the U.N. rights office.
"We have real concerns with respect to ... the laws of war and the principles of distinction, proportion and proportionality," spokesman Jeremy Laurence told reporters Monday.
A year of cross-border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah escalated on Sept. 23 when Israel dramatically increased its bombing of Hezbollah strongholds in the country's east, south and Beirut's southern suburbs.
The bombing sent many people fleeing to Lebanon's mountains, including Christian villages which are coming to fear the cost of hosting displaced communities.
Standing beside the church square, the elderly woman said she feared Israel's string of assassinations of Hezbollah officials would leave no community unharmed.
"We are afraid every day that Israel will come and target us because wherever there is a (Hezbollah) commander, they target him," she said.
But when talking about the displaced, she was more sympathetic.
"The poor things, they fled to safe areas, but now nowhere is safe."
Gaza horrors
The attacks on war-displaced people in northern Lebanon bring back to mind the horrors playing out in Israel's yearlong genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
A majority of Gaza's population have been displaced by the war, moving between different parts of the Palestinian territory to escape unrelenting bombardment and ground attacks which have so far killed over 42,000 people.
In the early days of the war, Israel forced Palestinians to migrate to Rafah on the Egyptian border and crammed nearly 3 million Palestinians into this tiny area, before attacking camps and schools housing the internally displaced population.