The Missing Bride of Anqoun

Residents of Beirut’s Ain el-Mreisseh neighborhood were going about daily life near the corniche when an attack struck the Hamad Building on April 8 shortly after 2 P.M. Samih Hassan, his wife Amal, and extended family living in their crowded apartment included Amal’s sister Ibtisam, nieces Malak and Zahra Abboud, and a domestic worker, Tesfanesh. The Abboud sisters had fled Anqoun in mid-March after an Israel-Hezbollah war escalated and an evacuation order threatened nearby towns. Their parents, Qassem and Hanan, remained in Anqoun, where Qassem ran businesses and internet services. The family’s search for missing relatives intensified after the day’s violence.

"In Beirut's coastal neighborhood of Ain el-Mreisseh, many of the residents of the Hamad Building, a seven-story apartment block, were preparing lunch. The building was one street back from the city's corniche, a wide promenade filled with joggers, children riding bicycles, and fishermen casting lines into a serene Mediterranean. It was a little after 2 P.M. on April 8th."

"One of the three apartments on the first floor was home to Samih Hassan, a ninety-two-year-old retiree who had served in the Lebanese security forces, and his wife, Amal. The couple had no children together, but their apartment, a two-bedroom, had become crowded in recent weeks: Amal's sister Ibtisam had moved in, as had two nieces, Malak and Zahra Abboud. An Ethiopian domestic worker, Tesfanesh, also lived there."

"The Abboud sisters came from Anqoun, a hillside town situated above the coastal city of Sidon, which is about an hour south of Beirut. They had left Anqoun in mid-March, fleeing the latest war that had erupted, days earlier, between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite paramilitary group. An Israeli evacuation order had been issued for an adjacent town, and they worried that it might soon extend to theirs."

"Their parents, Qassem and Hanan, remained in Anqoun. Qassem ran a money-transfer-and-currency-exchange franchise, and also an office that provided internet service to the town. Both of his daughters were single and lived at home. Malak, thirty-eight, was her father's right hand, helping manage his businesses. Zahra was completing a master's in biochemistry."

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