From October 2023 until June 2026, nearly 80 Lebanese Army soldiers and officers were killed in Israeli attacks and bombardments in the South of Lebanon. Among those they left behind are wives who had to rebuild a life around the absence – new decisions, new responsibilities, burdens they had never carried alone before. Three of them tell their stories here.
A Man of Duty, a Civilian's Fate
Abd Salam Al-Turki, a sergeant in the Lebanese Army, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his family's building in Kawthariyet El-Roz on March 7, 2026. His brother's home, next door, was directly targeted; his brother's body was found severely mutilated. Abd Salam's body, by contrast, was untouched by fire. He was found dead on the sofa in his living room. “It was his favorite place,” his wife Malak recalls.
“My husband worried that our four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Joury, would be terrified by the sound of missiles,” she says. “He rented a house in Miyeh w Miyeh, near Sidon.” The night before his death, Abd Salam drove Malak and their children to the rented home before returning to Kawthariyet El-Roz to report for military service the next morning. “He promised that he would come back the next day to pick me up,” she says, and the tears come before the sentence ends.
She was not allowed to say goodbye. “They wouldn't let me see his body in the hospital. They wouldn't let me speak to him alone, to ask him why he had left me behind. Everything happened so quickly, even on the day of the funeral. The paramedics would not allow me or my daughter to embrace him or sit beside him.” Within moments, Abd Salam had been lowered into the ground, gone forever.
“I dedicated my life to my family,” Malak says. “He was present in every detail of the children's lives.” Now she carries that presence alone – for Joury and for her eighteen-month-old son, Majd. “Joury will remember him and his details. But Majd will only know his father through photographs.” Most of the family pictures burned when their home was bombed; Malak's old phone, which held nearly all of their memories, had broken down days before. “The war took my husband from me,” she says. “It also took away the memories we shared.”
After being driven out of the rented home in Miyeh wa Miyeh, Malak now lives in Sidon, sharing a household with twenty of her in-laws. She tries to bring moments of happiness into her children's lives while keeping their father present in them. “Whenever I have money, I buy toys and place them under their pillows or beside them while they sleep. In the morning, I tell them, ʻDaddy sent me money so I could buy you these beautiful gifts.ʼ”
Emergency assistance has also been directed toward displaced military families. In April 2026, the UK Ministry of Defence delivered more than $150,000 worth of hygiene kits, bedding, washing machines, and cleaning supplies through the Lebanese Armed Forces, intended to meet the needs of hundreds of families affected by the conflict. The support was aimed at displaced LAF families broadly, rather than specifically at the families of soldiers who had been killed.
“Joury loved sitting on her father's shoulders. One day we were out, and she saw a father carrying his daughter that way. She stared at them for a long time.” Despite chronic back pain, Malak lifted her daughter onto her own shoulders, exactly as her father used to. “She was so happy.”
Asked what safety means to her today, Malak looks up at a photograph of Abd Salam hanging high on the wall, sitting on the mattress where she sleeps beside her children. She is silent for a moment. “There is no safety,” she says. Then: “Safety is sleeping next to my children at night, with their father's memory still alive in my mind.”
Joury, despite her age, is remarkably aware of her own feelings. She climbs into laps easily, kisses cheeks, looks directly into eyes when she talks – the same openness her father once showed her, now turned outward toward others. Since his death, she seeks some of that same affection from her uncles. When Abd Salam prayed, she used to climb onto his back during prostration; now she does the same with an uncle whenever she sees him pray.
She connects nearly everything she sees to her father. At his funeral, his coffin was draped in the Lebanese flag – and ever since, whenever she spots a flag or a soldier in uniform, she points and shouts, “Like Daddy!” At the funeral itself, she could not understand his silence. “When she saw him in the coffin, she cried and asked, ʻWhy isn't he looking at me? Why isn't he talking to me?ʼ” Afterward, she drew a grave shaped like a small box. “Look,” she told her mother. “This is Daddy's new home.”
What Malak carries is not only grief. Families of fallen soldiers are referred to the Directorate of Welfare and Social Affairs for Veterans, Martyrs, and the Disabled, the government body responsible for supporting them after a service member's death. Yet many widows in Lebanon find themselves suddenly navigating custody disputes, inheritance conflicts, and financial ruin alone – in a country whose economic collapse has severely reduced the value of state support for soldiers' families. Women become both mother and father overnight, often under pressure from in-laws, while the institution responsible for assisting them works with resources far below the growing needs.
On paper, the protection promised to these families is substantial. Under Lebanon's National Defence Law, the family of a soldier killed in an armed confrontation with the enemy is entitled to a survivor's pension and an additional payment equivalent to one year of his salary and allowances. Eligible dependents retain access to free military medical care, while his children may attend school at the state's expense – within the limits of what has actually been set aside in the budget. The law offers a map of protection. The lives of the women left behind reveal how much ground lies between entitlement and safety.
Counting the Days Since His Death
Fadel and Khadija's love story was well known in the town where they grew up – the kind people pointed to as an example of enduring love. Corporal Fadel Ayoub of the Lebanese Army was killed near his home in Kfartebnit while attempting to retrieve his military uniform before reporting for duty. The strike happened around 12:30 p.m.; he remained alive until roughly 3:30 p.m., though Khadija did not learn what had happened until an hour after that. “I completely lost control,” she recalls. “To this day, I still cannot believe it. I screamed for hours and suffered a nervous breakdown.”
Her nine-year-old son, Ali Al-Rida, remembers the date instantly: “March 27,” he says. Khadija, scrolling through photographs from Fadel's temporary burial in Haret Saida, corrects him without looking it up. “Not March 27. March 28, at 12:30pm. He was buried temporarily on March 29.” Asked how long it has been, she answers without needing to calculate: “Seventy-four days.”
Their relationship had begun when they were both nine years old. Khadija's voice stays calm and measured throughout; she does not shed a single tear. “I will not cry in front of anyone,” she says. “I only cry in front of Fadel.” Every afternoon, she visits his grave. “I talk to him. I tell him everything that is inside me. Then, when night falls and the cemetery empties and we are alone, I cry over his grave.”
“He was my entire life,” she says. “He had been my support since childhood.” She had once needed psychiatric treatment after losing her mother; nine years later, Fadel's death has put her back on medication. Unlike many widows who are denied a final farewell, Khadija was able to be with her husband at the hospital. “It comforts me that I was able to see him. I held him. I embraced him and his blood. I touched his face one last time.” She makes a small gesture with her hand, as if holding his face again. She kept his blood-stained clothes. “I dried them and kept them exactly as they were. I want to preserve the blood and his scent.”
Asked what safety means to her now, she answers without hesitation: “It is when I sit beside Fadel's grave. I do not feel comfortable or safe anywhere else. I do not have safety away from him.”
Her grief still overshadows almost everything else. “I cannot concentrate on anything. At this moment, nothing is greater than the loss of Fadel,” she admits, then sighs. “I know that one day I will become strong again. I won't have enough time to sit with my grief or spend hours looking at his photographs during the day. I want to mourn him in my own way. I want to allow myself to grieve before responsibilities take over.”
The promise of educational support sometimes arrives in tangible form. In December 2024, South Korean authorities donated 813 laptops and tablets to children of fallen soldiers and people with disabilities through the Military Veterans' Care and Social Affairs Department. Two months later, the same department received another donation of humanitarian assistance for the children of fallen soldiers from the Military Technical Committee for Lebanon. The announcements record what entered the institution; they say little about which children ultimately received it, how families were selected, or what support remained once the ceremonies ended. Inside Khadija's home, it is her children who first try to pull her back into the responsibilities of daily life.
At the funeral, while others wept, Ali Al-Rida shouted: “Dad isn't dead! Nobody cries for Dad. Dad doesn't like people crying for him!” He now rewatches videos of his father's burial and speaks often about death, his mother says. Days after the burial, he told her that his father had entrusted him to take care of her, just as he used to. During the darkest stretch of her mourning, when Khadija refused to eat, it was Ali and his sister who stood beside her: “Mom, if you don't eat, we won't eat!” Fadel had dreamed of immigrating to Canada once his service ended. Asked what he wants to become when he grows up, Ali – eyes fixed on a video of his father's burial – answers without looking up: “I want to immigrate to Canada.”
A Mother and a Father at Once
Over time, the initial shock changes shape. The pain of losing a husband never truly fades, but the responsibilities of daily life force widows to set their own grief aside. "I have to be equal to the responsibility placed on my shoulders as both a mother and a father at the same time, so that my children can feel safe," says Enaam, the wife of Corporal Samih Darwish. Despite the ongoing war, she remains in Sarafand, in the South – she has nowhere else to go.
Samih was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in Kfar Kila. “I was in shock,” Enaam recalls. “I didn't scream or even cry.” His funeral, held the next day in his hometown of Zawtar Al-Gharbiyeh, was followed by a dispute with his family over the inheritance owed to her three sons.
According to a source at the Directorate, much of its work extends beyond financial assistance. “We deal with the family as a whole,” the source said, explaining that the Directorate regularly mediates disputes between widows and the parents of fallen soldiers over child custody, guardianship, and inheritance.
Enaam's focus throughout stays fixed on her boys – their rights, their safety, what they have been denied. “My children were deprived of rights that belonged to them through their father,” she says. “I was subjected to insults, physical assault, and abuse by their uncle.” She hired a lawyer and filed multiple lawsuits. “I didn't go to court because of what happened to me, but my children's rights should not be lost.” She has now lost two homes to the war – the one taken in 2024, and the rented one after, along with the compensation that had been paid for the first.
The same source said that the Directorate's capacity has been severely constrained by Lebanon's economic crisis. The collapse of the Lebanese pound since 2019 has sharply reduced the value of the financial assistance provided to families, forcing the Directorate to rely increasingly on charitable organizations, private donors, and contributions such as clothing and school supplies. “We do what we can with the resources available, but the needs of these families have grown far beyond what the state can provide, especially with the increasing number of families due to the latest two wars,” the source said.
Foreign assistance has helped hold the army itself together. In April 2025, Qatar announced $60 million for military salaries and 162 vehicles; other donor packages have concentrated on recruitment, fuel, equipment, and deployment. Publicly announced support aimed specifically at bereaved families is harder to trace. What appears instead is a patchwork: a pension diminished by inflation, school support bounded by the state budget, and occasional donations of devices, clothing, or household necessities.
Her youngest, seven at the time, used to wake in the middle of the night calling for his father; she has taken him to the hospital at two in the morning. “Do they know about all my struggles to raise these boys on my own and make them feel safe?” she asks. Her children's personalities changed after their father died. “There were times when they would come home crying. I would tell them: ʻI am your mother and your father. Don't cry. You are not alone.ʼ”
“If he were still alive, no one would have treated us this way,” she says. “But I am strong. I will do everything to raise my children on my own and to protect their rights.”
Fallen soldiers are remembered in official ceremonies and annual memorials, but the lives rebuilt in their absence often remain unseen. Malak's, Khadija's, and Enaam's stories reveal the long-term consequences of loss for families left behind. Their experiences demonstrate that the impact of war does not end when the fighting stops, but continues in homes, classrooms, courtrooms, and the everyday negotiations of life after the loss.
Reporting Lebanon is a collaborative storytelling project that brings together independent Lebanese journalists to document everyday life in a country shaped by war, displacement, and prolonged instability. Through in-depth reportages and narrative-driven features, the project focuses on the human, social, and psychological realities that have unfolded in the aftermath of the 2023–2024 and 2026 escalation – at a time when violence has formally subsided in parts of the country, yet insecurity and uncertainty persist. Rather than offering situational reports, Reporting Lebanon prioritizes long-form journalism that stays close to its protagonists. The project seeks to capture how people experience, remember, and endure war – and how its consequences continue to shape daily life long after the headlines fade. Reporting Lebanon is a cooperation between the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and zenith.
