Dr. Taghrid Diab didn’t see the social media post warning her about the impending airstrike. It was her daughter who forwarded it to her with a message: “Is this your clinic?”

The post, made by Colonel Avichae Adraee, the Arabic-speaking spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), displayed an aerial image with a target building shaded in red. It was the building next to Dr Diab’s gynaecology clinic in Dahieh, a suburb south of Beirut, a neighbourhood dominated by Hezbollah.

“I began to cry. After 30 years of work, I knew my clinic was going to be destroyed,” said Dr Diab, a 57-year-old gynaecologist who provided care to hundreds of women in the area.

Her fears were realized overnight as Israeli airstrikes targeted Dahieh in the heaviest bombardment of Beirut since Israel escalated its military campaign against Hezbollah. Around 30 airstrikes hit the area, reducing several buildings to rubble. Lebanon’s Ministry of Health confirmed that 23 people were killed and 93 wounded in the strikes.

Dr Diab’s clinic, which had suspended services days earlier due to the increasing bombardment, was destroyed. Her dream of working alongside her daughters—three of whom went to medical school—was shattered. “This is a disaster. Women from all over Dahieh depended on this clinic,” she lamented.

Below her clinic, 73-year-old Shakeeb Saleh’s lighting shop was also devastated. Charred lighting fixtures hung from the ceilings, a grim reminder of the destruction. “It took me years to rebuild after a bomb hit my warehouse during the Israeli invasion of 1982. Now I am here again,” Saleh said.

The IDF confirmed in a statement that the strikes targeted Hezbollah’s weapons storage facilities. Israel’s ongoing offensive is aimed at allowing its citizens in the north to return to safety after facing sustained rocket fire from southern Lebanon over the past year. Hezbollah remains the dominant force in Dahieh, and the suburb has been a frequent target of Israeli airstrikes, including those that recently killed the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and his presumed successor, Hashem Safieddine.

By Sunday morning, the area around Dr. Diab’s clinic was unrecognizable. A 9-meter-deep smoking crater now stood where the target building once was, filled with debris and personal possessions.

Video footage circulating on social media showed widespread destruction in Dahieh, with multi-storey buildings reduced to rubble. Airstrikes continued into Sunday, as tension escalated ahead of an anticipated Israeli retaliation against Iran for its recent missile attacks.

At Al Rassoul Al-Azam Hospital, one of the few functioning emergency healthcare facilities left in Dahieh, a senior staff member described the chaos. The hospital, located just 150 meters from Dr Diab’s clinic, had been operating at severely reduced capacity, receiving patients with traumatic injuries caused by the strikes.

Reflecting on the once-busy neighbourhood, Dr  Diab’s voice trembled. “This area was always full of life—schools, shops, clinics, people walking everywhere.”

Though her clinic is gone, Dr. Diab remains determined. Her dream is now on hold, but not lost. “I will go back to Dahieh and work with my daughters,” she said, holding onto hope for the future amid the devastation.