Lebanese turtle activist Mona Khalil dies in Israeli strike

A Lebanese environmentalist who dedicated her life to protecting endangered sea turtles on the country's southern coast has died from injuries sustained in an Israeli strike earlier this month. Mona Khalil, 76, succumbed to her wounds on Friday, June 19, 2026, after being critically injured when her home was hit.

Khalil was wounded in an attack on her home, known as the Orange House, on al-Mansouri Beach near the coastal city of Tyre. The incident occurred on June 4 or June 5, according to reports from local medical sources and a nonprofit group. Her assistant, an Ethiopian woman, was also injured but is recovering. The Israeli military, in a statement on Saturday, said Khalil "was not a target" and that it had no record of a strike in which she was injured, but acknowledged conducting strikes in the area after issuing evacuation warnings.

Khalil was a pioneering conservationist who managed the Orange House Project, an ecotourism and conservation sanctuary she helped establish more than two decades ago. The project monitors a seven-kilometer stretch of shoreline that hosts more than 58 nests annually for endangered loggerhead and green sea turtles, species threatened by coastal...