Residents of this Beirut neighbourhood felt safe. Then Israel attacked it.

Residents of a Beirut neighbourhood tell Al Jazeera they felt safe until the Israeli attack on Wednesday morning.

Beirut, Lebanon – In the early hours of March 11, Mohammad al-Ahmad was asleep at home with his wife and kids when he heard an explosion. It was about 5:20am.

“I woke up in a panic,” he told Al Jazeera, sitting in his tracksuit in a supermarket across the street from the blast site in Beirut’s Aicha Bakkar neighbourhood, his close-cropped brown hair specked with grey.

“I wanted to go see if my kids were all right and then a second explosion happened.”

The strike took out two whole floors in a residential building, leaving the street below covered in glass, concrete and dust. The Lebanese Ministry of Health said four people were injured in the attack. Israeli media said the apartment was used by the Jama’a Islamiye (the Islamic Group), though the group denied that any of its members or offices were targeted.

Al-Ahmad said his building was directly next to the one that was hit and his apartment was on the same level. “Glass is all over the floor, it’s all broken. The house has a lot of damage,” he said.