Middle East Eye
In south Lebanon, Israeli drones use the sound of crying children to lure civilians
In south Lebanon, Israeli drones use the sound of crying children to lure civilians
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Adam Chamseddine
on
Tue, 06/09/2026 - 14:37
As in Gaza, residents say Israel is waging psychological warfare on civilian life and its soundscape
A displaced child from southern Lebanon looks through a fence at a school-turned-shelter, near Sidon, Lebanon, 17 May 2026 (Aziz Taher/Reuters)
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In the southern Lebanese village of Habboush, the sound that cut through the stillness of the night was not an air strike. It was the sound of a child screaming for help.
Hashem, a paramedic in the village, heard the cries coming from an Israeli quadcopter hovering overhead.
Speaking to Middle East Eye, he said this was not an isolated incident, but part of a pattern that has become increasingly familiar to residents who remain in southern villages.
“This is not the first time these drones have flown over us and broadcast different sounds,” Hashem said.
“Yesterday, it was the sound of children screaming and pleading for help. Before that, they broadcast the sound of an ambulance. Another time it was the Quran. Another time, it was the voice of a woman calling for help. We are living through this almost every day.”
For people who have decided to stay in their homes in south Lebanon despite Israeli occupation and daily bombardment, Israeli quadcopters have become a constant presence in the sky.
They surveil, issue warnings, broadcast messages and sounds, and turn the night into a psychological battlefield.
Residents and first responders say that beyond intimidation, Israeli forces use the distress sounds to lure people out of their homes or shelters, whether through fear, curiosity or the instinct to help.
Hashem said the first reaction to hearing such sounds is almost automatic.
“When you hear these voices in the silence of the night, your first instinct is to go outside and see what is happening,” he said. “That is what happened to me yesterday. But I quickly realised that it had to be coming from the drone, because it was impossible for there to be children in the village at that time, especially around midnight.”
He believes the aim is partly to spread fear among those who remain in the villages and push them to leave after exhausting them psychologically. But he also sees another, more immediate, purpose.
“Given that many villages are now empty of civilians, with only resistance fighters remaining in some areas, I think the goal may also be to lure someone out and identify them,” Hashem said.
The Gaza experience
The tactic is not new in Israel’s recent wars.
In Gaza, rights groups, journalists and residents have documented the use of Israeli quadcopters equipped with loudspeakers to broadcast the sounds of crying children, screaming women and calls for help in residential areas and refugee camps, particularly at night.
'When you hear these voices in the silence of the night, your first instinct is to go outside and see what is happening'
- Hashem, paramedic
Residents in Gaza said the sounds sometimes led people to believe that civilians nearby were in distress, only for them to realise that the cries were coming from small drones hovering above their neighbourhoods.
In Gaza, quadcopters were not only tools of surveillance. Throughout the war, doctors, residents and rights organisations reported their use above streets, homes and hospitals, where they were deployed to monitor movement, issue orders, intimidate civilians and, in some cases, open fire.
Their use with loudspeakers became part of a broader form of psychological warfare: confusing civilians, blurring the line between real and recorded sounds, and undermining one of the most basic human instincts – the impulse to respond to a cry for help.
Today, residents in south Lebanon say they are seeing elements of that same method transferred to their villages, albeit in a different setting. Their towns have been destroyed or nearly deserted, families caught between displacement and temporary return, and a war that has reshaped the relationship between people, sound and movement.
Controlling the soundscape
Tarek Mazaani, from the devastated southern town of Houla, knows that pressure first-hand. His home was destroyed during the 2024 war. He later moved to Zawtar al-Sharqiya during the ceasefire, before renewed fighting in March displaced him again.
During that period, Mazaani founded the Gathering of the People of the Southern Border Towns, a group that campaigned for residents’ right to return to their destroyed villages and for reconstruction to begin.
On 12 October 2025, he says, the Israeli army sent quadcopters over several southern villages, broadcasting warning messages that called on residents not to speak to him and to boycott him. The messages accused him of belonging to Hezbollah.
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Mazaani recalled the incident while displaced yet again, speaking from what had become his third displacement. The home where he had taken refuge in Zawtar al-Sharqiya has also since been destroyed, he told MEE.
“When the Israeli army did that, I had to leave the house out of concern for the lives of the residents and neighbours in the residential complex where I was staying,” Mazaani said. “I felt they could target me after those messages. I left my family and went somewhere else.”
He said the warnings later stopped after his case became a matter of public concern, was covered by several international media outlets, and drew statements of solidarity from senior official figures.
But for Mazaani, the impact of the incident went beyond his own safety. Broadcasting his name over southern villages, he said, was a message to the community around him as much as it was a message to him: anyone active on the issue of return, anyone challenging displacement, or anyone demanding reconstruction could be marked, threatened or socially isolated.
The testimonies of Hashem and Mazaani reveal another layer of the war in south Lebanon. It is not only a war of air strikes, destruction and displacement, but also of control over the psychological and sonic landscape of civilian life.
This use of sound places civilians in an impossible position. Responding may mean walking into a trap; ignoring it may mean turning away from a genuine cry for help. Between these possibilities, fear accumulates, trust erodes,and remaining in the village becomes a daily battle of nerves.
In south Lebanon, where the long memory of occupation intersects with renewed displacement, these quadcopters are seen as more than just military technology. They are experienced as extension of Israeli control: hovering overhead, watching, projecting disembodied voices, and forcing residents to question every sound and movement around them.
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