Max Butterworth is the Deputy Photo Director for NBC News in London.
Fadel Itani is no stranger to Israeli strikes in his hometown. The 39-year-old photographer from Beirut captured a stunning sequence of images in the early hours of Wednesday morning, showing an IDF missile demolishing a tower block in one fell swoop.
Itani, a freelance photograher with more than 16 years experience, told NBC News that he learned about the incoming strike from an alert sent by the Israel Defense Forces. It warned residents to evacuate the Bachura neighborhood in Lebanon’s capital where it said the Iran-backed militant group, Hezbollah, was operating. “For the last two weeks, bombs have been dropping on Beirut,” he said, speaking from his home on Wednesday. While others fled the incoming strike, Itani headed in the opposite direction. Hopping onto his motorbike, he made the short journey from his family home and positioned himself behind a parking lot some 400 yards away from the site the Israelis said they were targeting. Carrying only his camera and a wide-angle lens he watched and waited wearing a protective vest and helmet. After waiting for around an hour, at approximately 6 a.m. local time he said he heard the missile and quickly fired off a series of images at 1/3000th of a second, capturing it moments before it smashed into the building and the explosive aftermath. Within seconds the building was reduced to rubble. The IDF have targeted Beirut almost every day since March 2, when a salvo of rockets fired by the Hezbollah militant group sparked a new offensive into Lebanon. Throughout the campaign it has continued to strike Iran along with the United States. For Itani, Wednesday was just another day of documenting a devastating Israeli strike on the Lebanese capital and some of his previous pictures have been published by major news outlets across the globe, including similar images of an Israeli strike on a tower block in Beirut’s southern Shiyah suburb. Framed against the clear blue sky, the pictures of a single missile hurtling towards the building and men raising their arms in disbelief as it fell to the floor were widely distributed at the time. When he is not capturing missile strikes, Itani, a husband and father of two young children, regularly covers weddings and events in the city. “Every day my wife and mother wonder whether I will return from work,” he said, adding that he did not fear going out with his cameras but he reflected on the days events before he went to bed each night. “In Beirut there is a feeling of fear for what the IDF will do next, but the city is full of energy and full of life, even now.” “Nothing stops Beirut from living.”
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