Mariam, 11, a Lebanese Senegalese girl, is hugged by her father after she arrives on a repatriation flight at Leopold Senghor military airport in Dakar, Senegal October 19. on a flight repatriating citizens escaping the escalating conflict inAs Israeli forces pounded southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs in a broadening offensive against Hezbollah, Hachem’s daughter Mariam, 11, who had suffered a broken foot, was among 117 Senegalese flown to Dakar on a government-organised flight.
“We have a 14-and-a-half-year-old son who just disappeared like that. Ten minutes before, I was talking to him. ‘Hello?’ He said, ‘Dad, you’re going to come get me?’ I told him ‘yes’. Ten minutes later, they called me: ‘there’s no more house, no more son’.”