Lebanese elderly couple killed by Israel, Hassan Hamdan and Manar Abadi, memorialised

The family of Hassan Hamdan and Manar Abadi, an elderly couple killed in an Israeli airstrike on 28 February, memorialised their relatives over the weekend in their hometown of Kafra, south Lebanon.

Hamdan, 73-years old and his wife Abadi, 63-years-old, had left to Beirut to avoid the ongoing clashes between Hezbollah and Israel which started in the wake of Hamas's 7 October surprise attack.

They returned to Kafra on 28 February without telling their children, eager to check on their land and home after weeks of time away. The couple arrived in Kafra at 4 pm, and at 10 pm, were killed by an Israeli airstrike.

'Martyrs of the whole country'

The home was completely leveled, with trees flattened and the doors of store fronts up to 300 meters away crumpled from the force of the blast.

"We heard a warplane before the strike, which is usual, but this time it was flying low – which means they want to strike. I've been fixing the damage to the store all day," Mohammed, an employee of a hardware store opposite Hamdan's house, told The New Arab.

A video of the airstrike published by Israel says it was targeting "Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure," but relatives and friends of the couple said that they had nothing to do with any armed groups.

"[Hamdan] was a gardener; he took care of all of our lands. He and his wife just worked to eat," Sonia, the niece of Hamdan, told TNA at the couple's funeral on Friday.

She added that Abadi did not initially want to come back to Kafra on the day they were killed but was convinced by her husband that it would be safe.

At the funeral, mourners held up pictures of the couple as a local religious official commemorated their memories.

"They are not just martyrs of this town, or of their family, or of the south. They are martyrs of the whole country," Hezbollah MP Hassan Ezz al-Din said at the funeral.

Mourners carried the coffins of the couple to the cemetery, where family members said goodbye to their relatives before burying them.

Threat of full-scale war

Hamdan and Abadi are the 43rd and 44th civilians killed by Israel in south Lebanon since clashes began almost five months ago.

The number of civilians killed has increased as fighting increased over the last month, with what were clashes previously confined to the border expanding to greater distances in both Lebanon and Israel.

Western and Arab diplomats have attempted to mediate between Hezbollah and Israel to try to prevent a full-scale war, but so far, no solution has been found.

Israel has requested the withdrawal of Hezbollah's forces from beyond the Litani river, some 30 kilometers from the border, so that the around 100,000 displaced residents can return to north Israel.

Hezbollah, for its part, has said that it will not negotiate until a ceasefire in Gaza is achieved.