BEIRUT, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Fifteen-year-old Laila Abdallah stood motionless in the dust-choked air, staring at the jagged remnants of her family's home. An Israeli airstrike had reduced it to rubble weeks earlier, but the memory still pinned her in place.

"I don't even know how to explain it," she said. "The house just exploded. Stones flew everywhere, and then there was only smoke."

The attack, part of a cross-border conflict that erupted after Hezbollah opened a second front against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in solidarity with Hamas, has left Lebanon's children trapped in a cycle of terror. For many, childhoods once defined by schoolyards and laughter have been replaced by nightmares of missiles, rubble, and loss.

Roaring warplanes, like childhood story monsters, haunted Laila night after night.

"Whenever I hear them now, I hide under the bed, cover my ears, and shut my eyes," she said. "But I still see the smoke." Her breath hitched as she recounted the strike that shattered her home. "I keep imagining what if we'd been inside? What if we were buried there?"

Her story echoes across southern Lebanon. In Kafr Kila, 14-year-old Hussein Sheet recalled the airstrike that killed his father.

"I was playing in the garden when the planes came," he said. "I ran, but when I looked back, everything was dust." He wiped his eyes. "My father was gone. Our home was gone. Now I hear his voice in dreams, but when I wake up, he is not there."

For 12-year-old Jamil Daher, the war stole more than a home. An airstrike in Mays al-Jabal left him in a hospital bed, his right leg amputated. "I woke up covered in bandages. No one told me for days that my friends were dead," he said.

The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health reports that at least 316 children have been killed and 1,456 injured since the war began --figures that climb with each strike. But the invisible wounds cut deeper.

Psychotherapist Rania Awad, who works with displaced families, explains that children's trauma manifests in hypervigilance, nightmares, and stunted development. "These scars will outlast the bombs," she said. "They need years of support, such as safe spaces to talk, draw, and play. Without it, this becomes generational pain."

A U.S.- and French-brokered truce on Nov. 27, 2024, paused over a year of fighting, but sporadic Israeli strikes fuel fears of renewed escalation. Meanwhile, UNICEF warns that 45 percent of Lebanese families are skipping healthcare and 30 percent are pulling children from school to afford food and water.

The UN agency's February report starkly notes: "Recovery cannot begin until the guns fall silent." Enditem

Related

Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)