Mourners gathered in Beirut to pay tribute to a beloved Lebanese conservationist who died from wounds sustained in an Israeli strike on her home in the country’s southern coast.
Mona Khalil, 77, who spent over two decades protecting sea turtles along Lebanon’s shoreline, was critically wounded in the attack 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 sparked an outpouring of grief among environmentalists and those who volunteered and worked alongside her for years, many of whom gathered in Beirut on Sunday.
The Orange House project, which Khalil helped turn into a small conservation hub and eco-tourism site in al-Mansouri, became a sanctuary for rare sea turtles such as the loggerhead and green turtle, and a training ground for volunteers who document nesting activity along the coast.
Khalil was born in 1949 in Lagos, Nigeria. A Dutch as well as Lebanese national, she lived in the Netherlands before returning to Lebanon and settling in her grandmother’s former home — the building that later became known as Orange House.
At the heart of Khalil’s work was a narrow strip of coastline, al-Mansouri beach, where a fleeting encounter with a turtle emerging from the ocean to lay eggs in 1999 set her on a lifelong journey dedicated to the animals.
During 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 later decided to volunteer for 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 eventually persuaded her to evacuate for her safety.
“She was the last person to leave the area,” Jomaa noted.
“She had a terrible time in Beirut,” the journalist said, adding that Khalil longed to return to the south, to Orange House and the beach she had spent years protecting.
“She used to say, ‘My soul will remain here,’” Jomaa recalled conversations when Khalil pointed 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 eventually be laid to rest remains uncertain and depends on the security situation in the area, Jomaa said.
