Buried for 14 hours after Israeli attack, Lebanese toddler recovers

But then Ali “appeared in the rubble in the shovel of the bulldozer after we all thought he was dead,” he said.

“He emerged from the rubble after 14 hours, barely breathing.”

Israel is at war with Hezbollah since late September, when it broadened its war focus from fighting Hamas militants in Gaza to secure the northern border with Lebanon.

An escalating Israeli air campaign, after nearly a year of low-intensity cross-border fire, has killed more than 2,600 people across Lebanon since September 23, according to Health Ministry figures.

‘Psychological scars’

Signs of the violence were visible even in the hospital in Sidon, where Ali was rushed after the attack on Sarafand.

The toddler, who is in an induced coma after doctors amputated his right hand, has since been transferred to a medical facility in the capital Beirut where he will undergo pre-prosthetic surgery.

“Ali was sleeping on the couch at home when the strike struck. He is still sleeping today… we are waiting for his operations to be completed before waking him up,” said relative Hussein Khalifeh.

Other family members also fought to stay alive after the Sarafand strike.

One of Khalifeh’s nieces, 32-year-old Zainab, was trapped under the rubble for two hours before he was rescued and taken to the nearest hospital, the man said.

There she was later told that her parents, her husband and three children, aged between 3 and 7, had all been murdered.

The attack left her with only one seriously injured eye.

Zainab said she “didn’t hear the sounds of the rockets raining down on her family’s house,” Khalifeh said.

“All she saw was darkness and heard deafening screams,” he said.

Ali Alaa El-Din, a doctor who treated her, said that “the psychological scars Zainab suffered far outweigh her physical injuries.”

He also cared for Zainab’s sister Fatima, 30, who was injured in the same attack.

Both had injuries “throughout their bodies, with fractures to the feet and damage to the lungs,” the doctor said.

Medically, he added, “the cases of Zainab and Fatima are not among the most difficult cases we have faced during the war, but from a psychological and human perspective they are the most serious.”