\n<\/p>\n
Jaafar Annan has<\/span> been posted up on the sidewalk outside the emergency room of Rafik Hariri University Hospital, on the southern edge of Beirut, for so long that he\u2019s become a permanent fixture.<\/p>\n \u201cThe hospital has become my home,\u201d Annan said, exhausted.<\/p>\n Last week, an Israeli strike leveled the building where Annan\u2019s family lived in Kayfoun, a town in the Mount Lebanon governorate, west of the Lebanese capital.<\/p>\n \u201cI buried my father,\u201d he said, \u201cbut my mother is still missing.\u201d<\/p>\n Since then, his days have become a single-minded search for any sign of his mother, Fatima, who is 56. Like several others searching for missing family members, Annan gave a sample of his blood to the hospital, hoping he can get some closure with a DNA match to unidentified remains.<\/p>\n \u201cI walk through hospitals in the Mount Lebanon region. I stare at injured faces. I go to the morgues. I look for a mole, a mark,\u201d Annan said. \u201cThen I come back here. Waiting for the sample results.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are dealing with human fragments that the force of the explosions has turned into medical puzzles.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n The cold-storage units at the Hariri hospital have been fashioned into ad hoc laboratories to identify a relentless influx of dead bodies.<\/p>\n The unprecedented scales of DNA identification of corpses is born of a macabre need. Last week, after Iran and the U.S. agreed to a ceasefire, Israel pressed on in its Lebanese front<\/a> with a ferocious blitz of airstrikes. The toll was staggering, leaving demolished buildings and infrastructure, along with the attendant skyrocketing casualties \u2014 the violence rending people into unrecognizable forms.<\/p>\n \u201cThe bodies arrive completely disfigured,\u201d said Hisham Fawwaz, director of the hospitals and dispensaries department at the Lebanese Ministry of Health, which operates the hospital. \u201cThe remains are scattered and the features obliterated. We are often not dealing with whole bodies. We are dealing with human fragments that the force of the explosions has turned into medical puzzles.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After the Iran\u2013U.S. truce, Israel launched more than 100 strikes on Lebanon in just 10 minutes<\/a>, with the Israeli government taking to social media to brag<\/a> about its assault. The latest round of hostilities between with Israel had already brought weeks of ravages to Lebanon, but last week\u2019s onslaught, dubbed \u201cBlack Wednesday<\/a>\u201d by the Lebanese, razed densely populated neighborhoods in the capital. At least 357 were killed and more than 1,000 were injured, according to the health ministry.<\/p>\n A week later, dozens of people are still missing. The ceasefire in Lebanon<\/a> announced by President Donald Trump on Thursday will hopefully lead to fewer bombings, but it won\u2019t slow families\u2019 attempts to find their loved ones and, if worse comes to worst, identify their remains.<\/p>\n The families remain on a desperate quest to track them down, whether they\u2019re pinned under the wreckage or hidden among the dismembered bodies at the morgues like the one at Hariri Hospital.<\/p>\n At one point, more than 90 unidentified bodies were held there, some stretching back to the initial days of Israeli bombardment. Each body has been assigned a temporary number, waiting for someone to claim it.<\/p>\n The Health Ministry established a central triage center to absorb the uninterrupted flow of bodies, along with a protocol: document tattoos, distinguishing marks, and remnants of burned clothing that a family member might remember. Hospital workers also cross-reference physical descriptions from families with what is recorded of unidentified remains.<\/p>\n If that proves too difficult, doctors draw blood from living relatives to match the DNA against the unclaimed fragments of victims.<\/p>\n Zahraa Aboud had just recently fled her hometown of Anqoun in southern Lebanon. Israeli ground troops had invaded the town in March, razing entire villages and displacing<\/a> hundreds of thousands as they set up a buffer zone intended to stop Hezbollah from lobbing rockets into northern Israel.<\/p>\n When the Israeli airstrikes grew relentless, Aboud, 29, and her sister traveled to Beirut, to their aunts\u2019 apartment in the Ain Al-Mrayseh neighborhood. In the capital, she thought, they would be out of reach of the violence.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s missiles would soon come down on her.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
\u201cSuspended Loss\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n