There’s a makeshift shrine like none other outside the Ayoub family home in southern Lebanon.
Underneath a large picture of three little girls and their grandmother is a bright pink and white wreath of flowers.
But there are also black charred children’s shoes, a singed pencil case and blackened schoolbooks, with the edges of each page burnt.
There’s a section of what could be part of a car bonnet speckled with shrapnel holes sitting amongst two fluffy toy ducks and a pink teddy bear.
Image: A makeshift shrine for the victims outside their family home
This is all that remains of an Israeli strike on the car carrying the three sisters, their mother and grandmother.
The family’s uncle Samir Ayoub is kneeling down in front of the shrine gathering up the scraps of burned school paper.
“I’m keeping them because there may be DNA on them, or blood or something that the international courts can use to prosecute the people who did this,” he says.
He’s not the only one determined to get justice for what happened to his family. Human rights investigators are also gathering evidence to press for an independent criminal investigation into what they say is a war crime which took place on 5 November in Aynata in southern Lebanon.
“We found no evidence of any military target nearby,” says Ramzi Kaiss, from Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Lebanon.
He adds: “We have found this strike is unlawful because it violates the obligation that all parties should have to protect non-combatants.”
Image: Black charred children’s shoes have been placed at the shrine
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF), known as the Israeli Occupying Force (IOF) in Lebanon, released drone footage on social media early on 6 November, the day after the strike.
The series of videos and stills of strikes that they posted appeared to indicate the attacks were in Gaza. There is no mention of Lebanon at all.
Among the grouping of hits, there was one video of an attack on a lone car moving along a road.
The Israeli military said at the time they had also hit a man called Jamal Musa who they say was responsible for the special security operations within Hamas.
It was not clear which strike they were referring to in the group of attacks they posted collectively on social media.
The Sky News Data and Forensics team managed to geolocate the footage to Lebanon – and the same road from Yarin to Aynata on which the family car containing the five women and girls had travelled.
Image: The shrine contains a bright pink and white wreath of flowers
Following our repeated requests for information and after multiple exchanges, the IDF then told us that it had hit what it called a “suspicious vehicle” with “several terrorists” inside but it is now investigating whether some ‘uninvolved civilians’ were also in the vehicle.
It did not give us any details about who the “several terrorists” might have been.
Ramzi Kaiss, from Human Rights Watch, says the admission by the IDF that it had carried out the strike indicated a “disrespect” for international humanitarian law.
The organisation insists that under humanitarian law, if there is any doubt, no attack should have been carried out and there needs to be evidence the target presents imminent danger.
HRW is now calling for international intervention and pressure to ensure humanitarian law is upheld.
“Israel on several occasions,” Kaiss says, “has failed to conduct credible investigations and hold individuals accountable for war crimes or other violations so Israel’s allies UK and US and others should press for accountability on this apparent war crime”.
The family of women and girls had decided they needed to finally leave their home on the southern border with Israel after weeks of slowly escalating attacks between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese group, Hezbollah.
Many of their neighbours had already left the area for safer regions away from the border.
The family’s tragic journey
The Sky News team went on the same journey the family took with Samir Ayoub, their uncle and a journalist and political analyst from the Russian broadcaster RT.
Image: Samir Ayoub was escorting the family in a separate car from their home in Yareen
He’s lived in Russia for 33 years but had returned to southern Lebanon to help his sister Samira relocate with her three grandchildren; 14-year-old Rames, Talin, aged 12 and 10-year-old Lee-Anne, as well as her daughter-in-law, the girls’ mother, Houda.
Samir was escorting them in a separate car from their home in Yareen. He told us on the way to meet them, he was held up because of constant bombings along the route.
When he met up with them, the family, travelling in two cars now, chose to stop at a corner shop in the village of Aynata to pick up some water and snacks before their journey to Beirut.
CCTV outside the shop shows them entering the shop and then Houda, the mother, and 10-year-old Lee-Anne leaving and loading water bottles into the back.
Samir can be seen emerging on the right-hand side of the CCTV picture to help them.
As the car pulls away, you can just about catch sight of a woman wearing a black hijab in the passenger front seat (which Samir says was where grandmother Samira was sitting while Houda was at the steering wheel) and little figures in the rear of the car seat showing the three little girls sitting behind them.
He says he drove off first, in his car and had them in his rear-view mirror for the next 1.7km (one mile). He had already turned the corner of the road when he heard a huge blast.
He stopped and went back and when he looked round the corner the car had been blown off the road and into the nearby field and was already burning.
He ran down and says he saw the girls in the back who appeared already dead along with his sister, their grandmother Samira.
Their mother Houda was half out of the car and Samir pulled her to safety. “I could see the children melting in the flames and all I wanted to do was try to stop their mother from seeing her own children burning,” he told us as we stood next to the incinerated vehicle wreck.
“She didn’t say help me, or rescue me,” he said. “She just said I want my kids, where are my kids, help me get them out of the car.”
Even as we spoke, an Israeli drone circled above us the entire time. Samir pointed upwards and told us: “They were watching us on the day of the attack.”
He adds: “I even told the girls to play around outside of the car before we set off so the drone would see the vehicle was only carrying children.”
Image: The site of the tragedy, including the wreckage of the car
Vehicle became an inferno
Pictures filmed by eyewitnesses show that after the strike, the car turned into an inferno.
One of the shopkeepers who’d seen the family before the attack says they’d seemed excited. When they heard the explosion, one of them raced to the scene because he recognised the location was in the vicinity of his own home.
Hassan Kawsan said the vehicle was already on fire when he arrived. He described how tried to put the flames out but the extinguisher wasn’t working properly.
By the time he returned with a functioning one, the vehicle was engulfed in flames.
That night, local television filmed Samir with his shirt still covered in blood after pulling Houda out of the vehicle.
He was shouting at the cameras, addressing the Israeli military: “Are these children terrorists?” he demanded to know.
He wants the International Criminal Court to investigate and is urging European countries to help to ensure someone is held accountable for what happened to his family.
The death of a Reuters reporter
Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has conducted an investigation into the death of Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah who was killed on 13 October, a few weeks before the girls and their grandmother – this time in Alma Shaab, Lebanon.
Image: Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed in a ‘targeted strike’, according to Reporters Without Borders
The group concluded the “targeted strike” came from the Israeli direction. “According to the ballistic analysis carried out by RSF, the shots came from the east of where the journalists were standing; from the direction of the Israeli border,” RSF said.
Jodie Ginsberg, from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told Sky News: “We want to see an independent investigation into the killing of Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah in an attack which also severely injured several other journalists.
“A report by CPJ in May this year showed a decades-long pattern in which – prior to this latest war – at least 20 journalists have been killed by members of the Israel Defence Forces over the past 22 years and where no-one has ever been charged or held responsible for those deaths.
Journalists are civilians, not targets and those responsible for their killings must be held accountable.”
Referring to the incident in which Issam Abdallah was killed, an IDF statement said on the afternoon of 13 October, Hezbollah militants had launched attacks at several positions along the blue line, firing an anti-tank missile that struck the security fence of Israel near the community of Hanita.
The IDF said: “Immediately following the anti-tank missile launch, IDF soldiers suspected a terrorist infiltration into Israeli territory and, in response, used tank and artillery fire to prevent the infiltration.
“A report was received that during the incident, journalists were injured in the area. The incident is under review.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
0:42
Funeral held for reporter killed in Israeli shelling
Reporter’s friend speaks about incident for first time
We’ve spoken to one of Issam Abdallah’s close friends who was also working alongside him on the day.
Elie Brakhya, who is speaking about the incident publicly for the first time, is a veteran cameraman of numerous wars, including Ukraine, Syria, Yemen as well as Lebanon.
He tells us from his home in Beirut how the group of seven journalists had gone to the hilltop position in Alma Shaab on 13 October. The Israeli military and the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah have been trading fire across the border between the two countries since 7 October.
The group of journalists had gone to record the exchange of fire and were from a range of media outlets including Associated Press, AFP, Reuters and Al Jazeera, Elie’s employers. They were all clearly identifiable as media and were all wearing flak jackets and helmets marked with Press badges.
One of the vehicles parked right next to the group had press markings too. They positioned themselves where they could clearly be seen on the hilltop. “People could see us for miles around,” Elie says.
He says drones had been circulating for most of the time they were there as well as Israeli Apache helicopters. Several of the group had done live broadcasts from the position and they’d been there for more than an hour.
Image: The last selfie of Issam Abdallah and Elie Brakhya together
Issam had posted on his social media account, wearing his press-marked body armour. Elie took a selfie of the two friends together, again wearing their press-marked body armour.
“It was the last picture of the two of us,” he says. The group of journalists, he says, was relaxed and just going about their work when the strike hit.
“There was no whistle of anything coming from behind us,” Elie says. “We are experienced but not experts but it felt like it came from in front and above us.
“I saw straight away Issam was dead,” he adds. “He took the direct hit.”
Image: An image of journalists on a hill before they got hit
Several of the journalists were badly injured and the friends raced around trying to help each other. Live streams of several cameras recorded the blast and the immediate reaction.
One, a young journalist from AFP, can be heard on camera shouting she couldn’t feel her legs. They feared a quick second strike, so time was precious. “There’s always a second strike,” Elie says. He ran to his vehicle to try to locate some tourniquets to help his colleagues when the second strike happened just in front of his vehicle.
The whole of his left side was hit by the blast and he feared he’d lost his shoulder entirely.
“When I looked I couldn’t see my shoulder,” he says. The helmet he was wearing was blown off entirely and his left ear was rendered deaf immediately.
On his right hand, his thumb was blown off and he remembers gathering it up and holding it to his body.
His legs had been showered with dozens of shrapnel and he couldn’t move. He realised he was under his car which was already burning. “Then someone pulled me out from under the vehicle and I just saw it burst into flames,” he tells us.
When Elie’s friends later visited him in hospital, they apologised to him because he was so covered in blood they didn’t recognise him at the time and thought they were pulling a corpse from under the vehicle.
He checked the timecodes on his camera later and found there were 37 seconds between the two strikes.
“We were targeted, for certain,” he says. “There’s no chance we weren’t. Everyone could see us with our row of five tripods for miles.”
Lebanon blames Israel for double attack
The Lebanese military, which carried out an investigation into the incident, the Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Reporters Without Borders agree with him and blame the Israelis for the double attack.
“We’re not kids. We are professionals. We know what we are doing and what to do and where to go. This is our job,” Elie says.
“We know there are dangers. Of course, there’s a price you have to pay… we are paying our share but there’s a responsibility about this and there are international laws which should protect us.”
Astonishingly he says this was the second attack within a few weeks that he and his team have come under in Lebanon. Nobody was hurt in the first instance.
In a third attack on journalists (which he was not involved in), again the cameras were rolling live while a group of journalists in Yaroun on the southern border with Israel broadcast.
Again, it was a double hit with seconds to spare. Despite vehicles being set alight, remarkably only one of the group was injured.
The Lebanese authorities have said they intend to file a complaint with the UN Security Council over what they call Issam’s “deliberate killing” by Israel.
Lebanon’s National News Agency says the foreign ministry has instructed Lebanon’s permanent mission to the UN to submit a complaint.
These acts, the agency attributed to the foreign ministry, “constitute a blatant attack and a crime against freedom of opinion and the press, human rights, and international humanitarian law, by easily killing unarmed journalists who are victims of their desire to convey the truth, defend it with the lenses of their cameras and pens, and transfer them to the tape of the repeated Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon”.
A video taken in an abandoned Gaza hospital appears to show the decomposing bodies of babies who were left behind during evacuations.
The paediatric intensive care unit at al Nasr children’s hospital was evacuated around 10 November as the Israeli military continued its ground invasion into northern Gaza and called for people to leave the area.
During the week-long ceasefire, Mohammed Baalousha, a journalist with the Emirati TV channel Al Mashhad, entered the building where he found the bodies of several infants who had to be left in their beds while others escaped.
Warning: This article contains graphic content
Filmed around two weeks after the hospital was emptied, footage from the channel appeared to show at least three of five dead infants, according to Sky News’ US partner site NBC.
Their bodies were decaying, including one that had insects appearing to crawl over its chest.
All are near catheters and ventilators and one infant appeared to still be connected to a machine that measures the oxygen levels in blood, with tanks of the gas nearby, NBC reported.
Image: Pic: Mohamed Baalousha, Al Mashhad reporter in Gaza
The advanced stages of decomposition of the infants are consistent with the timeframe between them being abandoned and the date the video was shot, two independent forensic pathologists told NBC.
The US broadcaster was unable to verify the status of the infants within this two-week period.
Dr Mustafa al Kahlot, director of the hospital, said staff concluded they could not safely evacuate five babies, several of whom were premature and “on oxygen machines” when Israeli tanks encircled the facility.
“Our evacuation from al Nasr hospital was very difficult and under fire,” he told NBC News. “Children cannot be carried by hand or evacuated without oxygen equipment.”
In footage taken before the evacuation, Dr al Kahlot is seen in the same hospital room, warning that the building was the target of bombings, and that one child had already died due to a “lack of oxygen”.
A similar situation was faced at al Shifa hospital – one of Gaza’s largest – which came under intense bombardment by Israeli forces.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
One nurse, who works with the charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), was voluntarily working at al Nasr hospital at the time it was evacuated.
‘We only took one baby’
An audio recording he took on 10 November described a “sniper shooting” making it impossible for anyone to leave or move from the building, NBC reported.
“Five patients remained in the intensive care unit on the oxygen machine,” he is heard saying in the recording. “We left them. We only took one baby.”
“We had to leave patients on the beds. We could not take any patient with us,” the same nurse said in a separate video taken within this timeframe and seen by NBC.
Ashraf al Qudra, a spokesperson for the Gaza health ministry, said medical teams could not evacuate the five children by hand as there must be “health standards for transporting them”.
He told NBC that he blamed the Israeli military for the infants’ deaths.
Image: Premature babies were evacuated from al Shifa hospital
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was not involved in any evacuation operations, despite receiving “several requests” for help from hospitals in northern Gaza.
“Footage circulating of deceased newborn babies represents an unspeakable tragedy, an unacceptable reality of how civilians – including babies and children – pay the price in conflict,” the ICRC said in a statement.
In response to the claims, the Israel Defence Forces said “it did not operate inside the al Nasr hospital,” and that “these allegations are not only false but also a perverse exploitation of innocent lives, used as tools to spread dangerous misinformation”.
“This is more evident when taking into account that the IDF assisted in moving newborns from the pediatric ward of the Shifa hospital to safety, as well as provide Israeli incubators in the process,” the statement added.
Many had moved south from towns or cities like Gaza City, and have been told by Israeli defence forces they need to move again, further south, to the Rafah Crossing area that borders Egypt, or to the barren coastal strip of al Mawasi.
Image: A family evacuating from Gaza
Under the Israeli plan to ensure people move as safely as possible, they have divided Gaza into numbered blocks, and people living there, in theory, will be told when to move before bombings begin.
How long they will have to comply is unknown.
More on Gaza
Related Topics:
Leaflets have been dropped with a QR code linked to an interactive map with the numbered districts marked on it.
By any metric, to assume people now displaced, living rough, scared and disorientated, and unlikely to have internet when they don’t have food or water, could navigate the map would seem a bit of a stretch.
Advertisement
Sky News teams in Gaza met Muhamed Rayis holding the leaflet with the QR code on it. He says he followed the instructions, moved to a safe area, and then got bombed.
“Look at this is the leaflet. How can you bomb civilians in their homes? You’re telling people that Wadi Alsalga is safe, how come then you bomb there, at least warn us before you bomb us, they have bombed 3 or 4 houses, they’ve displaced people, why?”
Image: Gaza resident Mohamed Rayis seen with a leaflet marked with a QR code linking to an interactive map
‘We do not know where to go’
“We do not know where to go, because they have told us the central area is safe, and we came here and now they started to bomb us here too, so we do not know where to go. This is their leaflet!” he shouted.
What we have seen from our daily feed of pictures from our teams inside Gaza illustrates just how difficult and dangerous living in the south has become – and how difficult it will be for the IDF to complete its operation without killing further large numbers of civilians.
In a smoky haze in Khan Younis, our teams filmed as people tried to move during a break in the aerial bombardment.
They pick their way through what is now a battlefield from the north to the south of the Strip.
Image: Residents walking through war-torn Gaza
Donkey-drawn carts navigate their way around rubble and battle-scarred roads, while a steady stream of people move on foot. But there is little sanctuary to be found in Gaza.
Another set of pictures, scenes that have become all too familiar, show people heading into the rubble searching for the living and the dead.
It’s a constant, just like the airstrikes.
At the Nasser Medical Complex, a survivor dazed and covered in dust makes his way inside.
This man and a little boy alongside are told to sit on the floor in one ward, before being treated for their wounds.
Image: An injured man and child at Nasser Medical Complex
They’re among the luckiest of the injured as their injuries aren’t severe, but their faces are a picture of pure trauma and shock, and that doesn’t just go away.
The more seriously injured are rushed through the crowds, bundled into cars, and taken to the emergency room.
The hospitals that are still functioning in Gaza can barely cope, while the numbers of dead rise every day.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
4:32
‘Death toll may reach 75,000’
Situation is ‘catastrophically bad’
The Hamas-controlled health ministry says 70% of fatalities are women and children.
Doctor Nuradin Khatib is a junior doctor at the Nasser Hospital and he says it is a disaster.
Image: Doctor Nuradin Khatib tells Sky News the situation is ‘catastrophically bad’
Image: Patients inside Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza
“The pressure on the hospital with the number of patients and injuries has doubled,” he said.
“The situation is catastrophically bad, there are no beds for the patients, we have to treat the patients on the hospital floor as there are no beds to put them on, people are short of everything.”
“In all honesty the situation is extremely bad, the huge number of the injured as well the other patients who have long-term illnesses in all departments, it is beyond our power,” he added.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
0:23
Israeli airstrikes resume in southern Gaza
Aid supplies were initially stopped after the ceasefire ended but appear to have resumed as some aid has entered Gaza -though it’s a trickle, and nowhere near enough.
The IDF’s operations continue in the north and are developing in the south, and their campaign to oust Hamas continues.
The biggest concern though for the international community is what happens to all the civilians who are not sure where to go to find safety.
Many people in and around Khan Younis in the south have come from the north, and are having to move yet again.
In reality though, there’s not much further south they can go.
Spreaker
This content is provided by Spreaker, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable Spreaker cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Spreaker cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow Spreaker cookies for this session only.
The UK will conduct surveillance flights over Israel and Gaza as part of hostage rescue efforts.
The Ministry of Defence said the surveillance aircraft “will be unarmed, do not have a combat role, and will be tasked solely to locate hostages”.
“Only information relating to hostage rescue will be passed to the relevant authorities responsible for hostage rescue,” the ministry said in a statement.
The flights will take place over the eastern Mediterranean, including operating in air space over Israel and Gaza.
The MoD said the UK government had been “working with partners across the region to secure the release of hostages, including British nationals, who have been kidnapped” since the Hamas attacks on 7 October.
“The safety of British nationals is our utmost priority,” it said.
UK military was deployed to the eastern Mediterranean the week after the 7 October attacks, with RAF aircraft and Royal Navy ships sent to the region.
The MoD’s announcement came as US vice president Kamala Harris called on Israel to do more to protect civilians.
Advertisement
She reiterated America’s stance that Israel has a legitimate military objective against Hamas, but said “too many innocent Palestinians have been killed”.
“Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering, and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating.”
Ms Harris was speaking at COP28 in Dubai, where she also laid out broad American objectives for when the war ends.
She told the Egyptian president that “under no circumstances will the United States permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank, the besiegement of Gaza, or the redrawing of the borders of Gaza”, the White House said in a statement.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Appeals from the US to protect civilians followed the resumption of fighting on Friday as a seven-day truce came to an end.
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country’s troops had spent the ceasefire preparing for “absolute victory”.
Speaking at a news conference on Saturday, he said he had instructed the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) to resume the war with “increasing intensity”.
He said 400 Hamas targets had been “eliminated” since the ceasefire ended. He vowed to continue ground operations, saying Israel’s objective of destroying Hamas could not be achieved otherwise.
Strikes have intensified in the south of Gaza, which is now home to most of the strip’s two million citizens.
The Hamas-led Gaza health ministry said at least 193 Palestinians had been killed since Friday, adding to the more than 15,000 Palestinian dead since the start of the war.
Meanwhile, Palestinian militant groups in Gaza said rockets were fired into southern Israel.
There were no reports of damage or injuries by Saturday night.