Tyre, South Lebanon:She was finally able to rest in peace...

During the early days of Israel's war on Lebanon, Zeinab Fakhoury refused to get out of her house in Tyre to escape the Israeli assault on Southern Lebanon. Unfortunately, Israel's missiles that hit her building forced her to remain inside her living room for 37 days, until a courageous team of the civil defence of Beirut's Tarik Al-Jdideh made it their sole mission to rescue her trapped body so that she can rest in peace.


Between and 5 and 6 p.m. on July 16,2006 two Israeli air strikes hit a residential building that housed the civil defense offices in Tyre, collapsing the four top floors of the 13 leveled building. Several families were in the basement of the building after fleeing Israeli assaults in their nearby home villages. One of the missiles destroyed the top two floors of the building while the second hit the entrance where civilians were huddled.

Among those who were killed…one woman remained suspended between the rubbles of her house… Zeinab Fakhoury, a 54 year old woman, died while sitting in her living room, not knowing that she would stay in her house for 37 days, her home which she refused to get out of during the first days of war. Her maid's faith is still unkown.

Dr. Hassan Fakhoury saying, I ran and started to scream "Where is my sister", "where is my sister" like all other people asking for their families. I knew she became a martyr."

Jihad Fakhoury, a Red Cross volunteer followed up the mission from the minute the building was targeted, this young man had a more personal approach, Zeinab Fakhoury was his aunt.

The family told us that many trials were conducted to pull out her body, starting from the municipality of Tyre to the Amal and Hezbollah movement. The family later on stated a call for help on two of Future Television's shows. MP Bahia Hariri heard of the story and a team of the civil defense of Beirut's Tarik Jdideh came for an exploratory mission, but once they arrived there they felt they could execute it right away, and rescue her ravaged body so she could finally rest in peace…
Youssef Mallah, one of the members of the civil defense team explained to us the nature of the undeniably dangerous and risky mission." We studied the nature of the building and specified the side from which we were going to conduct the operation. We chose the building right next to the targeted one."

They had to dig two holes in the building to connect it to the other one through a handmade bridge, and so that they would be able to slide down the wooden ladder.
The wooden ladder that was put into place was parallel to both buildings. The civil defense member Ibrahim Al-Kurdi or like the Fakhoury family called him, "Spiderman" was tied with 3 safe ropes.

All that Al-Kurdi was able to remember from his heroic mission was that god was with him all through out the 45 minutes of the operation.
As soon as he reached the other building, climbing over these metal wires, he positioned himself to be able to free Zeinab's body, but unfortunately the only option was to liberate it by cutting it into three halves or else she would have stayed hanging in space for 60 more days.