Israel Is Using U.S. Bombs in Lebanon to Commit Alleged War Crimes

The families of Lebanese civilians killed with American “bunker busters” want to hold both Israel and the U.S. accountable

Funeral arrangements for Mohammad Zaydan, Wissam Zaydan, Mona Al Shaker in a local graveyard (photo by Tarek Turkey)

Mohammad Haidar, 21, says his parents, Fatima Fekiyeh and Abbas Haidar, spent twenty years trying to have a child before he was born. Five years later, they had his sister, Hasnah, who completed their small family. They lived in southern Lebanon, in a house near the village of Seksekiyeh. Fatima and Abbas marked forty years of marriage last year in the village, where, Mohammad says, their life was idyllic, only sharing the land with horses and chickens.

Everything has been upended by Israeli bombardment.

Hezbollah began firing rockets and artillery at Israeli military posts one day after Israel began its assault on Gaza in October 2023. Israel bombed Lebanon, mostly in the south, with the low-level cross border attacks continuing for nearly a year. In September, Israel escalated the conflict into an all-out war. Bombs began raining down on large parts of Lebanon, including the south, causing widespread devastation and leaving entire towns in ruins. In total, more than 4,000 Lebanese people were killed and 1.2 million displaced.

Mohammad said his family planned to flee to Beirut on September 23. That same day, Israel launched one of the most intense aerial bombardment campaigns in recent warfare. The family never made it to the capital.

Mohammed recounted his attempts to flee from this ongoing bombardment to Al Jazeera English’s documentary program Fault Lines. “My father went to pick up our relatives so we can all leave for Beirut,” he said. “We wanted to escape the planes. I went to the third floor, and I had just finished eating. I was just about to get up when suddenly I saw the entire house collapsing.” He continued, “it was like a rainstorm, but the color was gray. As soon as I hit the ground, I was gone. I was unconscious. At first I had no idea what happened. I didn't think it was a missile or anything like that. But, then, I woke up, I started to scream, tried to move. I realized I could not get up.”

Mohammad was trapped underground for seven hours. “Death is easier than being stuck under rubble,” he recalled, “you can’t breathe, you can’t move, all of the stones are on top of you.” As people arrived to help, he could hear his father’s voice through the chaos, alongside the relentless sound of bombs falling nearby. “My father was asking me if my mother and sister were next to me. I said I didn't know, and then I was unconscious. I was coming in and out of consciousness because I was having a hard time breathing.”

When Mohammad was finally pulled from the wreckage, emergency workers rushed him to a hospital. Initially, news of his mother and sister’s fate was kept from him. He learned the next day that both had been killed, after seeing a memorial photo of his 15-year-old sister, Hasnah, posted online. Her body had been found three hours after the initial strike, but his mother’s body has never been recovered. “My mother, may God rest her soul, she’s still inside the stones,” he said, “we haven’t found her. Not even a single part of her. Maybe the missile fell on her and she evaporated. No one knows.” For months, Mohammad documented the ongoing search for her body in videos he posted on TikTok.

He says it’s taken a toll on his father, who remains trapped in a constant state of shock. “He cannot accept what happened. Every single day he comes to search,” Mohammed told Fault Lines, “when he reaches here, he starts to cry. His home, his sweat and tears, his family—it’s all gone.”

Evidence for War Crimes

No one has explained to Mohammad or his father why his home was bombed. The Israeli military has repeatedly claimed, on social media and in public statements, that it targets Hezbollah facilities and fighters, but it has not commented on this specific attack. Mohammad says his family are not Hezbollah members or fighters, and there’s no evidence to suggest otherwise.

“As you can see, it’s a normal house. We have nothing to do with anyone; we’re living alone here. They convey to the media that these are Hezbollah targets. But in reality, that’s not true.”

Only the frame of Mohammad’s house remains—lying in ruin among rocks, stones, and twisted metal—and stands alone in the center of their once-gated land. The destruction of the civilian home did not unveil any tunnels, reveal any weapon storage facilities, or unearth any militant activity.

Among the debris, Fault Lines found shrapnel and large metal casings, which were photographed and sent to forensic investigators at Airwars, a watchdog tracking civilian harm in conflict-affected nations. They partnered with Armament Research Services to analyze the munitions.

Emily Tripp, Airwars’s director, says the footage showed evidence of a JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) kit: “it's a piece of material that attaches onto a specific munition and allows it to hit a very particular coordinate. So from that, we know that there must have been coordinates essentially plugged into the targeting system in order for that bomb to have been dropped.”

JDAMs are American-made, as are most of the bombs attached to them. U.S.-manufactured weapons used by Israel in Lebanon have killed many civilians, including Mohammad’s mother and sister. Airwars identified the weapon that struck Mohammed’s house as a BLU-109, a 2,000 pound bomb in a category known as “bunker busters.” These bombs can penetrate hardened structures—including concrete, steel, and rock—before detonating, and they have been used by the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq, and by Israel in Gaza—with devastating consequences.

The BLU-109 is considered a “dumb bomb,” meaning it cannot navigate once released, but when paired with a JDAM, it becomes a “precision-guided munition,” capable of adjusting course mid-flight using GPS coordinates to hit a specific location. This suggests that Mohammad’s home was intentionally targeted.

Tripp adds: “We have found no evidence, based on our review of the online information environment, around connections between this family and Hezbollah. This is a typical situation in that a military will make a decision, drop a bomb, and assume that nobody will say anything afterwards.”

We shared our findings and evidence with Dearbhla Minogue, a senior lawyer at the UK-based Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), an independent organization whose work includes pursuing cases involving serious human rights violations. Minogue confirmed that, based on the available evidence and without an explanation from Israel, the attack could constitute a war crime.

Mohammad’s story is just one of many in a war that has resulted in widespread civilian casualties, often caused by U.S.-supplied munitions.

Fault Lines emailed the Israeli military’s press office to ask why Mohammad Haidar’s home—a civilian residence—was struck. They did not respond.

America’s Role

In the United States, the Leahy Law prohibits the U.S. government from providing military assistance to foreign military units credibly accused of gross human rights violations. Human Rights watchdogs, like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have called for Israel to be investigated for war crimes, and accused it of committing genocide during its assault on Gaza. Despite this, Israel continues to receive more U.S. weapons annually than any other country.

For years, massive arms shipments to Israel have received wide bipartisan support in Washington. The Trump administration has approved around $12 billion worth of arms to Israel since January alone, while just months earlier, the Biden administration authorized the export of thousands of JDAMs—like the one found at Mohammad Haidar’s home.

Democratic Senator Mark Kelly has repeatedly spoken in favor of providing these weapons to Israel. Fault Lines spoke to him on his way to a committee meeting in February and asked him about his advocacy for the sale of JDAMs. He explained that: “JDAM is a much more precise weapon, helps you hit the target and to avoid collateral damage.”

However, Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned over U.S. arms transfers to Israel in October 2023, argues that Gaza serves as evidence that Israel has no interest in that type of precision, and he underscored American responsibility: “The reality is that every bomb dropped, every tank that rolls through Gaza, and every missile fired from U.S.-made aircraft carries with it the weight of American policy decisions. And, in many cases, we are complicit in those actions, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.”

In his role, Paul worked on vetting arms sales. He says the process changed when weapons were sold to Israel after October 7th: “Any space for debate, discussion, for remediating possible bad outcomes went away, because the whole process was flipped on its head […] it wasn't, we are not going to be asking you for your approval. It was, ‘you must approve this’, and there were deadlines.”

The bombs were approved and widely used: the type of 2,000-pound bomb that destroyed Mohammad Haidar’s home was also reportedly dropped on Lebanon’s capital Beirut—just days later.

Celebrated by Leaders, The Strike That Killed a Family

At around 6 p.m., on September 27, 2024, Amira Zaydan stood on her balcony in Beirut when she saw smoke rising in the distance. The smoke was drifting from the southern suburb of Dahiyeh, where her mother, father, and brother lived in an apartment. Turning to her husband she said, “I think my family is dead.”

A series of “bunker buster” bombs had been dropped by the Israeli military on the Haret Hreik municipality. Israel later claimed it had struck Hezbollah’s "central headquarters,” allegedly located "under residential buildings.” The strike killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and was celebrated by then-U.S. President Joe Biden, who called it “a measure of justice.”

But this was the same attack that killed Amira’s family.

She rushed to the site of the bombing. “When I got there after the strikes, I was just screaming because the site was catastrophic. The Red Cross wanted to take me to the hospital because I fell to the ground a few times.”

Emergency crews, overwhelmed by the scale of the destruction left by the 2,000-pound American-made bombs, could not locate her family. That night, Amira returned to the site, and she found her uncle holding a flashlight, digging with his bare hands and calling out her father’s name. It took five days for their bodies to be recovered.

Her brother, 22-year-old Mohammad Zaydan, was found first. “They asked me if I wanted to identify the body, and I agreed. I wasn't prepared for what I was about to see. I entered the room, and as soon as they opened the bag he was in, I glanced quickly and started to scream. I didn't want to see if it was him or not. My uncle came and started to rub [my brother’s] head, but then his skin came off. At first, I said it wasn’t my brother. I didn't want to accept that this was him.”

“We tried to lift his eyelids to see if it was him, but we didn’t find any eyeballs. His eyes had exploded.”

The next day, emergency workers found her father, Wissam Zaydan, and then her mother, Mona Al Shaker. “My uncle told the rescue workers to work delicately. Once they recovered the couch, they found my mother sitting on it. When they tried to move her, the top of her head fell off, it had melted.”

Her tone is fast and detached, Amira recounted the details as though they belong to someone else, until she broke down when recalling her final exchange with her mother. “That morning I sent her a message telling her to forgive me if anything happened to me. She said don’t speak like this. I swear, I felt like something was going to happen. I told her I wanted to go over there.”

She added: “Israel did this. They say that they had warned us, but they didn’t. They didn’t warn us about that initial strike on September 27.”

Amira says there were other families living in the building who also died. The total number of civilians killed remains unclear, but Fault Lines has verified that at least seven civilians were killed in the same attack.

Absence of Accountability

Despite the immense loss and grief, Amira is not expecting justice.

“We say God-willing whoever did that to our parents and other people will feel this pain and more. If he’s [Joe Biden] saying that we achieved justice by assassinating Hassan Nasrallah—what justice could they have achieved by killing civilians? He killed innocent and oppressed people, like my family.”

Both Israel and the U.S. are not parties to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Additionally, the U.S. holds veto power at the United Nations Security Council, and Israel does not cooperate fully with international bodies. As a result, Amira and Mohammad are unlikely to bring accountability to fruition through international mechanisms.

Mohammad Haidar is also not expecting answers, but he does have a message for the U.S. government.

“The weapons being sent to Israel are killing innocent people as you have seen. Boys, girls—they’re killing everything. Elderly people, animals. They’re uprooting the trees. This isn’t right. They should not be selling them any weapons, or give them anything else.”

Lama Al-Arian contributed reporting