Jawad Younes, 11, and his cousins were playing soccer in the lot between their houses, as they often did. His little brother, four-year-old Mehdi, had joined them but grew tired, so Jawad took him home and handed him off to their mother before returning to the game. Minutes later, an Israeli strike came.

The target was Jawad’s uncle’s home. The blast shook neighbouring buildings and threw Jawad’s siblings at home to the ground. As their mother, Malak Meslmani, scrambled to help them up, she could think only of Jawad.

“I was pulling my children off the floor in the house, but as I was running to pick them up, I screamed, ‘Jawad,'” she said. “My heart told me.”

Her son was instantly killed in the March 27 Israeli strike in Saksakieh, which also killed his cousin and wounded several other children.

Jawad and his cousin are among 168 children killed — of more than 2,100 people in all — by Israel’s strikes in the six weeks of renewed war between the country and Iran-backed Hezbollah, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

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