‘I had Eye Of The Tiger blaring through my headphones as I flew up the highway,’ Shafi tells me. ‘I was screaming and crying – I felt completely helpless.’
The 34-year-old Lebanese father-of-two had just fled the Israeli bombardment across the south of his country on his motorbike.
Amid an increasing climate of fear, most who reside in the Hezbollah-controlled south are too afraid to speak out. But this man has agreed to tell his extraordinary story to the Mail for the first time.
Using a pseudonym, Shafi said he decided to flee after the most petrifying night of his life. The Israeli bombs had rained down for three hours non-stop. It was more than he could bear.
No matter how difficult it was to leave his elderly father, who refused to leave, Shafi had to go.
The 34-year-old Lebanese father-of-two, pictured, who fled Israeli bombs on his motorbike with Eye of the Tiger blaring in his ears
A man stares at a building still smouldering after it was levelled in an overnight Israeli airstrike
‘I have never felt as scared as that in my life,’ he said.
At 6.30am on Sunday, as the first light appeared, Shafi flung a bag over his shoulder and said a difficult farewell to his father.
Minutes later he was racing up the highway towards his family from his village near Tyre, his headphones blaring Eye Of The Tiger as he feared being taken out by Israeli drones.
He was gripped by both terror and devastation at leaving his home. Though just 40 miles, the ride felt like it lasted a lifetime.
He passed scores of abandoned cars, navigated his way around damage from an air strike and once on the highway opened the throttle and rode flat out until he reached the safety of Saida.
‘I felt completely exposed. I was terrified of a drone taking me out. I was also racked with guilt at leaving my father,’ said Shafi. But he felt he had no choice. The bombing had been growing in intensity for weeks.
‘At first most of the Israeli hits were vehicles or at the edge of the villages,’ he said. ‘The attacks were precision strikes with drones. There were no jets until three or four months ago. But the strikes started to get really close a few weeks ago. Now, if there’s one single member of Hezbollah, the Israelis will take the whole building down.’
Then came the exploding pagers. ‘Oh that was scary. I have friends with no eyes, no fingers, some are paralysed, others missing chunks of their bodies,’ he said. Hezbollah’s response only led to further escalation.
A view of damaged buildings and debris in the aftermath of a strike on October 3
Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted a neighborhood in Beirut’s southern suburb on October 3
There was a hit near the filling station where he worked. The same day there was a ‘belt of fire’ – a wall of strikes ten to 20 kilometres long.
Shafi’s wife, with their two young children and the rest of their family, fled north ten days ago.
‘My father said to me, ‘Right here, my son, is my heaven’, about his house. My dad just wanted to stay in his place,’ said Shafi, who felt duty bound to remain with his father.
News of the Israeli invasion a day after Shafi left was the final straw for his 70-year-old father and he, too, headed north.
Now together in Saida, the family have no idea when or if they will be able to return home.
It comes as the IDF claimed yesterday it had eliminated 60 Hezbollah terrorists, including Khider al-Shaebia – responsible for killing 12 Druze children in the Golan Heights in July.
The Lebanese army said it had returned fire on Israel for the first time after two of its soldiers – who are not engaged in the fighting – were killed. Meanwhile, Israel claimed it struck a Hezbollah HQ in Beirut and US citizen Kamel Ahmad Jawad was killed in a strike in the south on Tuesday.
