"My heart told me they were gone"

Almost every day for the past month, Hussein Saleh has made a somber pilgrimage to the plot of land in southern Lebanon where his house once stood, scouring the land for trinkets that belonged to his wife, daughter and six other relatives killed in an Israeli attack.

"I come here every day or every other day, check what's there, look around, try to find memories, a phone, anything that can calm my heart and make it a little easier," said Saleh (34).

Little remains on that plot of land in the historic Lebanese port city of Tyre: stones from his razed house, the metal casings of an Israeli rocket, a tattered book that belonged to one of his daughter's relatives.

"I feel like the world is so hard, so cruel," Saleh said, breaking down several times as he spoke to a Reuters reporter.

He recalled a modest home once full of life, where his five-year-old daughter Sara played with older relatives or fed two young goats that belonged to his wife's aunt.

However, on March 6, while he was out grocery shopping, an Israeli rocket hit his house, killing his wife, daughter, his sister-in-law and her husband, their two children, and his wife's two aunts.

"I heard two explosions and my heart sank. My heart... my heart told me they were gone," he said.

More than 1.500 people have been killed in Israeli attacks and military operations in Lebanon since March 2, when a new war broke out between Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.

The dead include 130 children and 101 women, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.

A two-week ceasefire was announced between the United States and Iran on Wednesday. Hezbollah has suspended attacks in accordance with the agreement, Lebanese sources close to the Iran-backed group told Reuters. Israel has continued its strikes, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Lebanon was not included in the truce.

A series of explosions rocked Beirut, sending smoke billowing over the capital, as the Israeli military said it had launched the largest coordinated attack of the war so far, targeting more than 100 Hezbollah command centers and military sites in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon.

Dozens of people were killed and hundreds wounded in the attacks on Lebanon yesterday, the most intense since the start of the war, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. In Beirut, Reuters journalists saw people on motorbikes picking up the wounded and taking them to hospitals because there were not enough ambulances to reach them in time. A group of firefighters put out a fire in a parking lot after more than a dozen cars were burned and crushed in one attack.

Saleh said the bombing that killed his family blew up their bodies and severed his daughter's head from her body. He had to bury the different body parts together because they were so disfigured and deformed that they could not be properly separated.

"The attack that happened here was full of hate. It was not something ordinary. Why they were targeted, I don't know," he told Reuters.

He stated that his relatives were civilians and that there was no military equipment in his house.

The Israeli military did not respond to Reuters questions about the attack, including what or who the military target may have been.

Israel has issued evacuation warnings for large parts of Lebanon, covering about 15 percent of the country's total territory, including Tyre, since March 2. International law experts say evacuation orders should be tied to imminent attacks and that follow-up strikes must still avoid harming civilians.

Saleh said Sara had been undergoing physical therapy to walk again after a health problem that left her partially paralyzed.

"We were hoping that in two months he would be able to walk again and play like other children... I don't know how to describe this loss," he said. Now he can no longer spend time alone, because the loneliness is too much.

"The loss, the separation from them, is so hard. My whole life has changed," he said.