Mourners gather to remember Lebanese conservationist Mona Khalil killed by Israel
A memorial was held in Beirut for Mona Khalil, 77, a beloved turtle conservationist who died from injuries sustained in an Israeli strike on her home in southern Lebanon.
Mourners gathered in Beirut on Sunday to pay their respects to Mona Khalil, a renowned Lebanese conservationist who died from wounds caused by an Israeli attack on her home in the country's southern coast.
Khalil, 77, had spent more than two decades protecting sea turtles along Lebanon's coastline. She was critically injured in the strike on the village of al-Mansouri in Tyre province on June 4 and succumbed to her injuries more than two weeks later, on Friday.
News of her death triggered an outpouring of grief among environmentalists and volunteers who worked with her over the years, many of whom gathered in Beirut on Sunday.
The Orange House Project, which Khalil helped build into a small conservation hub and ecotourism site in al-Mansouri, became a refuge for endangered loggerhead and green sea turtles and a training ground for volunteers documenting nesting activity along the coast.
Khalil was born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1949. She held Dutch and Lebanese citizenship, having lived in the Netherlands before returning to Lebanon and settling in what had once been her grandmother's home – the building that later became known as the Orange House.
At the heart of her work was a narrow stretch of coastline, al-Mansouri beach, where a fleeting encounter with a turtle that had emerged from the ocean to lay its eggs in 1999 propelled her on a lifelong journey devoted to animals.
Each nesting season, Khalil and volunteers would patrol the beach at night, marking fresh tracks in the sand and carefully relocating vulnerable nests away from human activity and coastal light pollution.
Journalist and environmental activist Fadia Jomaa first met Khalil in 2016 while researching sea turtles in Lebanon and then decided to volunteer with her project.
During the previous war between Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah in 2024, Khalil initially refused to leave al-Mansouri beach, Jomaa said. The Lebanese army ultimately persuaded her to evacuate for her safety.
"She was the last one to leave the area," Jomaa noted.
"She had an awful time in Beirut," the journalist said, adding that Khalil longed to return to the south, to the Orange House and the beach she had spent years protecting.
"She used to say, 'My soul will stay here,'" Jomaa said, recalling conversations in which Khalil would point to an olive tree or a small hill overlooking al-Mansouri beach. "She used to say, 'This is where you will bury me.'"
Where Khalil will ultimately be buried remains uncertain and is tied to the security situation in the area, Jomaa said.
