Al-Hattaniya

On the evening of March 9, 2025, residents of Al-Hattaniya heard the armed groups advancing and made the only calculation available to them: run. Families gathered what they could — children in arms, the elderly helped along — and disappeared into the neighbouring forests as their village was taken behind them. Those who could not run did not survive. 14 civilians were killed, among them women too old or infirm to reach the woods in time. There was no combat. They were simply the ones the forest could not save. What followed was deliberate and irreversible. The armed groups that had entered Al-Hattaniya proceeded to set fire to 56 houses — nearly the entire village — one after another through the night. Furniture, clothing, documents, photographs, the accumulated record of families' lives across generations — all of it burned. The fires were not set in haste or anger. They were set with patience, by people who understood exactly what they were doing: if there is nothing to return to, the displaced cannot return. Al-Hattaniya today is largely charred ruins and empty foundations. It has become one of the defining examples of the scorched-earth tactics that ran through the coastal campaign — total destruction designed not just to punish the present but to foreclose any future.