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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Simona Foltyn in the Beqaa valley

‘Reservoir of the resistance’: the Lebanese valley reviving its role in Hezbollah-Israel conflict

Photos and posters of men propped against graves
Graves of fighters behind the shrine to the Hezbollah co-founder Abbas al-Moussawi, in Nabi Chit. Photograph: Simona Foltyn

On a recent morning near the town of Nabi Chit in Lebanon’s eastern Beqaa region, a dozen men were clearing away debris. Israeli jets had thundered through the valley a week earlier, the second such raid in three days. The explosions turned the night sky red, yellow and orange, and filled the air with the smell of dust and gunpowder.

“They hit Nabi Chit because our village is the mother of the resistance,” said Mohammed al-Moussawi, an ardent supporter of Hezbollah, the Shia militant group, political party and social movement known here as the resistance. He stood on the ground-floor terrace of his house in front of a pile of rubble and a twisted metal awning. The windows were blown out, the facade pockmarked with shrapnel.

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