Beirut, Lebanon – A map of Palestine and figures wearing black-and-white keffiyehs adorned flyers littered below an apartment building – its sixth floor entirely wiped out by an Israeli drone attack on Sunday.

Israel’s strike – the first to hit central Beirut in nearly a year of conflict – killed four people, including three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Palestinian leftist faction and resistance movement. 

The flat served as the group’s office, according to a PFLP officer The New Arab spoke to at the scene, and was located at a busy transit centre known as ‘Cola’ in central Beirut.

“My wife, my three children, and I were sleeping. My brother was smoking shisha on the balcony. Then, we heard a loud sound, an explosion, and we couldn’t see anything,” a 50-year-old man, who was living on the sixth floor of the building, told The New Arab at the site. He requested to remain anonymous. 

Just one week ago he and his family fled their village of Zefta, in Lebanon’s southern Nabatieh governorate, when it came under heavy fire from Israel. For a brief period, they had found safety in the Beirut apartment – but it was cut short by the Israeli drone, ripping through their building.