Conflict Incident Report

Hundreds of mourners laid to rest the body of a young girl who was killed by a stray bullet in the eastern city of Baalbek one day before.

The funeral procession for Lamis Hasan Nakkoush, who was born in 2008, was held at Nasser Square in Baalbeck, where hundreds walked through the city’s commercial district, where shops closed in solidarity with Nakkoush and her family.

The convoy briefly stopped outside the Baalbeck Serail to send a message to the government and press the arrest of violators.

In an atmosphere filled with both melancholy and rage, residents demanded that security forces and the Lebanese Army address the breakdown in security.

Nakkoush was laid to rest in Hay al-Solh cemetery.

“Today, Baalbeck loses Lamis, and yesterday we lost, and every day we lose a victim,” Baalbeck-Hermel Mufti Sheikh Khaled Solh said. “We aren’t burying the dead but we are burying martyrs due to sporadic bullets.”

"Sadly these bullets are protected and licensed from the state and non-state groups,” the mufti added.

“We tell them to save Baalbeck from this security situation that it is enduring; this city deserves life and its people deserve to live in dignity.”

“Is the Baalbeck-Hermel region not part of this nation?” Solh asked. “We want a state that stands next to the victim and not next to the murderer.”

Article 75 of Lebanon's Weapons Act explicitly states that "anyone who opens fire in populated areas or amid crowds of people, whether with licensed or unlicensed weapons, is to be punished by a jail sentence of between six months and three years.”

Earlier this month Lebanon’s Central Security Council urged the judiciary to issue firm sentences against suspects linked to random gunfire cases. The council meeting was held one day after Amal Khashfe was killed by a stray bullet in Beirut’s Al-Tariq al-Jadideh.

Former Baalbeck-Hermel Mayor Sheikh Bakr al-Rifai was also present.

“What do we do in Baalbeck?” al-Rifai asked. “Is our fate to mourn every day the loss of young people so weapons can remain abundant and the state absent?"

He called for families in Baalbeck to form safety committees in all neighborhoods, adding that they now should opt for “self-security.”

Al-Rifai issued a fatwa, saying: “Kill who wants to infringe on your dignity before he kills you.”

Baalbeck Roman Catholic Patriarch Elias Rahhal also attended the procession.

“We are against everything that is happening and that continues to happen,” Rahhal said. “Weapons are in the hands of people who don’t know how to use them.”

He added that he wanted the state to be “firm” and steadfast, echoing al-Rifai’s words of the need for citizens to resort to self-defense.

Baalbeck Mayor Hussein Lakkis and members of the municipal council took part in the funeral, in addition to local civil society, religious groups, and members from the city's branch of the Future Movement.