In south Lebanon's Tyre, man seeks family mementos after deadly Israeli raid

Clutching a battered photo album, Mohamad Ali Hijazi searched a mountain of rubble in south Lebanon's Tyre for mementoes of his family, killed in an Israeli strike minutes before a ceasefire took hold.

"I'm trying to find my mother's hairbrush... and a bottle of perfume that she loves," said Hijazi, 48 -- some of the last things he sent her from France, where he has long lived with his wife and two daughters.

"My life has been destroyed. I haven't slept for five days," he said, repeatedly fighting back tears.

His sister Ghazwa and her two young children were killed alongside his cousin in the Israeli attack on April 16 that flattened six buildings.

His mother Ikhlass was pulled out alive but died later. His father and a nephew miraculously survived.

The bombs struck just before midnight, when the pause in fighting began between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, which drew Lebanon into the Middle East war on March 2.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday announced a three-week extension of the ceasefire.

"I saw the strike and I broke down," said Hijazi, who first learned of the raid on social media in France.

"When I saw the damage... I expected them to come out in pieces... and they were in pieces," he said.

"It was like a horror film."

For a seventh day, excavators were removing rubble from the vast devastation in the residential area in Tyre, just a stone's throw from the sparkling blue waters of the Mediterranean.

- 'Innocent civilians' -

Curtains, cushions and mattresses, a red fluffy blanket and a dish rack were all strewn through the rubble, while a ground-floor minimarket had been obliterated.

Lebanese authorities say Israeli attacks have killed more than 2,400 people and wounded some 7,700 others.

Deputy mayor Alwan Charafeddine said around 27 bodies had been recovered from the site, with the search ongoing for at least one missing person, while body parts were being DNA tested.

"All my memories are here," Hijazi said, holding the damaged family album close as he surveyed the devastation.

Dust rose as the excavators worked, an Israeli drone buzzed overhead and smoke rose along the Lebanese coast near where Israeli forces are still operating.

Hijazi said his mother died shortly after he visited her in hospital.

There was no space in the cemetery so "we opened my grandfather's grave... and buried her with him".

"Here we are all innocent civilians... We have no link with any party," said the distraught Hijazi.

Across the street, surrounded by shattered glass, his stunned father Fadl Hijazi, 66, watched the bulldozers work.

The large, blue-eyed man, his arms covered with blackened wounds, recalled trying to make his family laugh by pretending to shoo the Israeli warplanes away not long before the strike, and tucking in his grandson.

- 'Ripped our hearts out' -

Then it was as if "there was an earthquake... only the cupboard stopped the ceiling from crushing us", he said.

He said he was pulled from the rubble around three hours later, not long after his young grandson was rescued.

"I lost my family, I lost my loved ones," he said.

"I've lost everything... they pulled me out barefoot, people have brought me clothes and shoes."

Many of those who were killed had stayed in their homes because they couldn't afford to go elsewhere, he said.

Israel's army had previously issued sweeping evacuation orders for swathes of Tyre and the country's south, but no specific warning preceded the April 16 raid.

"Why did they strike us?" he cried out in distress.

"They ripped our hearts out. For what? Are there fighters or rockets here?" he added, gesturing at the street.

"We never thought this would happen before the ceasefire... We're used to the planes, but to wipe out a whole neighbourhood?"

From a balcony overlooking the grim scene, Fadia Melliji, a relative of the Hijazis, said she used to like being on the veranda.

But now, "when I wake up in the morning I think maybe I'm having a bad dream", said Melliji, 53.

"They didn't just bring down a building, they brought down a street," she said in shock, adding that "in an instant, everything disappeared."

"Why this massacre?" she said.

"People were sleeping in their beds."