Ali Khalifa, a child from South Lebanon who had not yet completed his second year, was targeted by an Israeli airstrike on his family’s home in the town of Sarafand with a number of heavy missiles last Tuesday.
The three-story building was destroyed on top of its residents: Ali’s parents, Mohammad and Mona, his little sister Nour, his two grandmothers, and 11 other people were killed.
15 people were killed and Ali could have been the 16th, but he did not surrender to death.
Ali remained steadfast under the rubble for 14 hours, as the missile amputated his right hand from the forearm, and the rubble shattered his skull, but a couch that fell on him protected him from suffocation in the rubble.
The morning after the massacre, after all hope of finding survivors was lost, bulldozers began their work of lifting the rubble to extract the bodies of the victims. In one of the “rooms” of rubble, rescue workers were surprised to find Ali in the bulldozer’s “Kila”, covered in his blood, but he was alive and destined to be the only survivor.
Children in Lebanon need an immediate ceasefire
