Lebanon can be no stranger to conflict. But Monday was the deadliest day the country has seen in a generation.
According to Lebanese authorities, about 500 people, including at least 35 children and 58 women, were killed in Israeli airstrikes.
That's about half the number of people killed in the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
That conflict was brutal. I still remember the stench of victims rotting in refrigerator trucks because it was too dangerous to take the bodies out while Israeli attack drones and fighter jets patrolled overhead.
When the fighting finally stopped, about 1,100 Lebanese had been killed. 21 Israeli soldiers and 43 civilians were killed by Israel.
Fighting in the Shadows: On the battlefield, Hezbollah fighters must be furious enemies. They fought off an Israeli ground incursion in 2006, but throughout the war, I never saw a single armed Hezbollah fighter so capable of blending in.
The Iran-backed group operates as a “state within a state” in a bitterly divided country with a borderline bankrupt government without a president, where neighborhoods still bear the scars of a 15-year civil war. are
Lebanese citizens know all too well how terrifying the Israeli military's efforts to target Hezbollah can be.
On Friday, Israeli jets launched an airstrike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, killing several senior Hezbollah commanders. But the missiles also destroyed a nine-story building in a densely populated neighborhood, killing 45 people, including women and children.
The Israeli military accuses Hezbollah of using civilians as human shields.
Family Escape: But that's little consolation to Lebanese citizens like my mother-in-law, who was a block and a half from the building destroyed by the Israeli jets. For hours, my family struggled to evacuate my wife's grandmother – a paraplegic who could not leave her apartment.
Similar to the displacement of terrified civilians fleeing the Israeli bombardment of southern and eastern Lebanon on Monday, my in-laws have sought refuge in another neighborhood.
Now four generations are crowded into one apartment, including a one-week-old baby, aunts and uncles who work as teachers and building contractors. They have nothing to do with Hezbollah.
We hope and pray that their neighborhood will not be bombed.