Lebanese photojournalist recalls surviving drone and missile strikes that killed her colleague

In mid-April, Israel agreed to a ceasefire in Lebanon after a month of deadly airstrikes, much of them concentrated in the south, where whole villages were flattened. Many residents hoped the truce would let them return home or at least see what was left. Among those who headed south was Zeinab Faraj, a 21-year-old photojournalist, who set out on 22 April with Amal Khalil, a 42-year-old newspaper reporter, to document the aftermath.

Khalil had contacted Faraj after seeing her work on social media, and the two had since collaborated on several assignments. Faraj, who was freelancing while finishing a degree in radio and TV, says she expected the trip to be routine. "I had absolutely no sense of fear," she says, adding that gunfire and artillery were audible but were the kind of thing a videographer wants to capture.

As they neared the village of al-Tiri that afternoon, Faraj found herself reminiscing. She grew up in the nearby city of Bint Jbeil and says leaving it feels like a fish being taken out of water. Ahead of them was a car carrying Ali Nabil Bazzi, 27, a Bint Jbeil municipal official, and Mohammed Hourani, 37, a friend of the mayor. The two women had met them by chance earlier at Tebnine governmental hospital, a gathering point seen as relatively safe. Bazzi was due to sign a marriage contract that evening but still wanted to join the trip.

Faraj says she never heard the missile. She heard Khalil scream and then saw the car ahead in flames. The two women got out, and Faraj, oddly calm, thought she might be able to pull Bazzi free. Khalil kept repeating that the men were gone, and Faraj says she saw their bodies torn apart.

Then drones arrived, flying low and close. Faraj says one came so near her face that she tried to cover it, and it rose again whenever she did. The women phoned emergency services, who repeatedly promised help was coming. Faraj says those assurances worked "like an anaesthetic". A paramedic told them to drive back up the road because ambulances were being blocked from reaching them, but their car was hit by a missile as they tried to get in.

Both were thrown backwards, with Khalil wrapping her arms around Faraj. Khalil said she hoped the drone would "think we were dead". They took shelter in a nearby house, where Khalil, bloodied on the face, hand and leg, could not move. Faraj sent her sister a final message before her phone died: "There's no hope left. Forgive me." When a drone dropped sharply toward her as she watched the road, she says her heart stopped. A missile then fell with a sound she had never heard before.

Faraj woke trapped under rubble, barely able to breathe. A paramedic who had reached the site held her by the shoulders, and she begged him not to leave. A second paramedic cleared the debris, and as drones returned they pulled her out while she screamed in pain. She says a stun grenade was dropped by a drone around then, and in the ambulance she kept mistaking the vehicle's engine for a drone. At the hospital, nurses first reassured her about Khalil, then went quiet. Khalil is believed to have died about an hour before paramedics were allowed back to the area after rescuing Faraj.

The Israeli military said it had identified saboteurs violating the ceasefire. Human rights groups called the attack a war crime. They noted that the military received repeated messages asking it to allow a rescue while the women sheltered in the building. A week earlier, an Israeli military spokesperson had shared a video of Khalil published by her newspaper and labelled it "terrorist media", and Khalil had also received death threats from Israeli numbers.

As she prepares to return to university, Faraj still struggles to walk properly and has a visibly injured hand, while a facial injury has affected the movement of one eyebrow. "I was always on the move. I lost that," she says. She wakes at night screaming, and drones and warplanes put her on edge. Whether she will go back to frontline journalism is uncertain. She says she is haunted by the sight of Hourani on the ground, his eyes open and looking at her.