Lebanese bury 13 officers killed by Israel as grief and outrage surge ahead of talks in the US

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SIDON, Lebanon (AP) — Women in black screamed in grief and toddlers sobbed uncontrollably, calling out for their dead fathers and uncles. Men in uniforms, pistols strapped to their belts, wept openly for their comrades at the funerals on Saturday for 13 Lebanese state security officers killed in an Israeli airstrike the day before.

In the past week, similar funeral scenes have played out hundreds of times across Lebanon as Israel intensified attacks against what it says are Iran-backed Hezbollah infrastructure and militants. The Israel-Hezbollah war — raging in the shadow of the larger U.S.-Israeli war on Iran — has so far killed more than 2,000 people in Lebanon and wounded thousands more.

But Friday’s killing of so many state security personnel at once, when an Israeli airstrike hit their office headquarters in the southern town of Nabatiyeh, has struck a particular nerve, coming just two days after Israeli strikes on Beirut and beyond killed over 350 people in one of the deadliest single bombing campaigns in crisis-wracked Lebanon's history.

“We just want protection,” said Adam Tarhini, a 20-year-old computer science student, whose father, Hassan Tarhini, was among the officers killed in Friday’s attack. “Where is the state?"

The outrage at the funeral reflects the prevailing mood across the country as Lebanon and Israel, which do not maintain diplomatic relations, prepare to start direct talks next week in the United States, for the first time in decades.

The prospect of the talks has sent anti-government protesters into the streets and piled pressure on Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who has demanded a truce as a condition for negotiations.

Israel insists the talks in Washington have nothing to do with a ceasefire and will focus on the disarmament of Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah militant group.

“We want to achieve complete dismantlement of Hezbollah’s weapons, and a serious and true peace agreement,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday.

That's a hard sell to Lebanese who saw Israeli strikes kill dozens in the hours before Netanyahu spoke, local authorities report.

According to Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the war has "once again given Hezbollah and its supporters the ammunition they need to say that they are, in fact, resisting Israel.”

“Now we have added to that an element of domestic tension and kind of an underlying threat of civil unrest," she added.

Salam said Saturday he has postponed his planned trip to Washington, citing “the current internal situation.”

Though his absence should not derail the talks — the first round is expected to be at the ambassadorial level — Salam's announcement that he would stay in Beirut to “preserve the security and unity of the Lebanese people” cast a spotlight on the awkward dynamic that the government here is navigating as it seeks to halt Israeli attacks without openly confronting the far stronger forces of either Israel or Hezbollah.

The strike crashed into the state security headquarters in Nabatiyeh just minutes after 14 officers returned from what would be their last mission — transferring detainees from the southern town to a safer facility in the coastal city of Sidon, further north. The one surviving officer is being treated for severe burns.

Among the youngest was 25-year-old Khalil al-Miqdad, who celebrated his wedding three days before he was killed. His bride, Amani, staggered through the crowds of mourners in a daze, clutching a smiling photo from their wedding day.

“They killed Khalil. They killed my love," she said, her anguish erupting into a shriek.

In response to a request for comment on the attack, the Israeli military said it had struck Hezbollah militant infrastructure in Nabitiyeh on Friday and was “aware of reports regarding harm to Lebanese security personnel.” It said it was investigating the incident.

Families of the buried officers hurled themselves onto their temporary cinder block gravesites on a hill overlooking the Shiite village of Haret Saida, neighboring Sidon. Several mourners collapsed, overcome with grief, and were carried away on stretchers.

Like most displaced Lebanese from the south, they were too frightened to bury their dead in their home villages as Israeli forces pushed deeper into Lebanese territory. Israeli attacks and blanket evacuation orders have uprooted more than 1 million people across Lebanon.

Even the main cemetery in Nabatiyeh came under attack a few weeks ago, residents said, forcing them to resort to such temporary graves in cities like Sidon, where tens of thousands of displaced Shiites from the south have taken refuge.

Both the mourners in Sidon and the protesters in Beirut on Saturday blame the government almost as much as Israel for the recent deaths of so many civilians and state workers.

They cite the state's failure to protect its people as the reason Lebanon needed Hezbollah to resist Israel's invasion and what they fear are plans for a longer-term Israeli occupation of Lebanese territory. Netanyahu on Saturday said Israel was working to establish buffer zone 8-10 kilometers (5-6 miles) into Lebanon to guard against Hezbollah attacks.

The underfunded Lebanese army, maintaining a position of resolute neutrality in the Israeli-Hezbollah war, has pulled back from several southern positions as Israel accelerates its invasion. Still, Israeli strikes killed four Lebanese soldiers this week.

In downtown Beirut, protesters set fire to portraits of the the prime minister. Ali Akbar Velayati, a top Iranian official, warned the Lebanese government on social media against the dangers of “ignoring the unparalleled role” of Hezbollah’s armed wing.

At Saturday's funeral, even those who said they supported the government said they expected the talks would show to the world that Israel responds to nothing but military force.

“No one wants negotiations with people who killed our friends, our colleagues, our family,” said Abbas Saleh, a 26-year-old rescue worker from Nabitiyeh, who helped bury the officers near makeshift graves for five of his fellow medics killed by Israel last month.

The Israeli army is being "held back by people who are defending the land," he said, meaning Hezbollah.

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Associated Press writer Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.