Among them was an Associated Press photographer. Hassan Ammar had donned his flak jacket and helmet and rushed to the scene — taking up his position at a safe distance using a long lens — after the Israeli military issued an evacuation warning with a map marking the targeted building.
The Israeli army said the building contained facilities belonging to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
However, Ammar had different associations with the building. He had grown up less than a kilometer (less than 0.6 miles) from it, and he had been there on multiple occasions.
When he was a child during the 15-year Lebanese civil war that ended in 1990, “this building was on the front line between Muslim and Christian neighborhoods,” the so-called Green Line, he recalled.
But in later years, Ammar said, he visited the building “many times.” There was a notary public on the first floor, and next door was a sports supply store where he used to shop. Next to the building was a cemetery where his family had loved ones buried.
Ammar said he even once considered renting an apartment in the building that was struck, or in the building next door — now he can’t remember which — because it had a beautiful view of the pine trees in Horsh Beirut, a large public park nearby.
When he heard the sound of the projectile overhead, Ammar had his camera already trained on the building set to a high shutter speed, and he began snapping photos immediately, capturing the bomb in mid-air and as it descended, ending with a massive explosion.
There were no immediate reports of casualties, but much of the building was reduced to rubble.
