BEIRUT — Taking cover behind a large tree, an Associated Press photographer pointed his camera toward a Beirut apartment building the Israeli military warned was in its sights.
When a missile plunged from the sky moments later, journalist and lens were perfectly positioned to document the trail of destruction — second by second, frame by frame.
“I heard the sound of the missile whistling, headed toward the building and then I started filming,” photographer Bilal Hussein said Tuesday, hours after Israeli forces launched the attack. The images Hussein captured of the projectile, frozen in mid-flight before obliterating the structure, provide a striking look at the speed, power and devastation of modern warfare.
The strike on Tuesday came roughly 40 minutes after an Israeli military spokesman posted a warning in Arabic on social media, notifying people in and around a pair of buildings on Beirut’s southern outskirts that that they should evacuate the area.
He did not explain why the buildings were being targeted, other than to say they were near “interests and facilities” associated with the Hezbollah militant group.
The warning prompted many people to flee the busy, densely populated neighborhood, even as others, including a few journalists, kept watch. By the time of the attack the building had been evacuated and there were no reports of casualties Tuesday.
Minutes before the missile brought down the building, two smaller projectiles were fired at the roof in what Israel’s military often refers to as warning strikes, according to AP journalists at the scene. It is a practice Israel has followed in staging strikes in Gaza during past wars.
When the primary missile hurtled toward the building Tuesday it was a blur, but Hussein’s camera provided witness. One picture showed the missile arching through the air. Another captured it a fragment of a second before it smashed through a lower-floor balcony. In the images that followed, a cloud of smoke and debris billowed outward as the building collapsed.
Hussein, who has spent years covering conflicts in Iraq and Lebanon since joining the AP in 2004, says he has become accustomed to the sounds of explosions. The night before the building was destroyed, he filmed more than a dozen Israeli strikes nearby,
“I have the ability to control my reactions in critical moments and maintain stability as much as possible,” he said.