'A pioneering environmental defender'

Renowned Lebanese turtle conservationist succumbs to wounds sustained in Israeli strike

Mona Khalil, 76, was the founder of a sea turtle sanctuary near Tyre; IDF says she wasn’t a target, but acknowledges carrying out strikes in the area after an evacuation warning

A renowned Lebanese marine conservationist known for her work protecting endangered sea turtles died on Friday from injuries said to have been sustained in an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon earlier this month.

Mona Khalil, 76, was critically injured in an Israeli strike on June 4 that hit her home in the village of Mansouri, around 10 kilometers (six miles) south of the coastal city of Tyre, local and international media reported.

She was hospitalized at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, where she succumbed to her wounds on Friday. The Guardian newspaper reported that Khalil’s assistant was burned in the same strike but is recovering.

The Israel Defense Forces told CNN that Khalil was not a “target,” and that “there is no known IDF strike in which she was injured.”

It acknowledged, however, that strikes were conducted in the area around her home village “after the IDF issued evacuation warnings.”

Khalil was the founder of the Orange House Project, a sea turtle sanctuary named in tribute to the Netherlands, where she lived during the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war.

She returned to Lebanon from the Netherlands in 1999, when, on a visit to her family’s abandoned home near Tyre, she had her first encounter with the endangered sea turtles that lay their eggs on the Lebanese coast.

She recalled the encounter in a 2006 interview with the New York Times, telling the newspaper that she came across them “completely by accident.”

“I suddenly heard a noise. It was a turtle creeping through the sand coming to lay her eggs,” she said.

Lebanon is home to subspecies of the green turtle and loggerhead turtle, both of which are highly endangered according to the Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon.

The two species lay their eggs along the coast of Tyre in southern Lebanon and at the Palm Islands Nature Reserve in the country’s north.

According to the Times, Khalil successfully protected 58 sea turtle nests on the strip of coast around her village.

She also delved into ecotourism, hosting guests at the Orange House who would volunteer to protect sea turtle nests and take part in beach cleanups.

Guests who wished to stay at the Orange House, which was also home to rescue cats and dogs, had to be coordinated with the Lebanese military, the Guardian reported, due to its proximity to the Israeli border and therefore the increased risk of being caught up in flare-ups between the IDF and the Hezbollah terror group.

The Orange House was indeed hit by a strike during the 2006 Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah. Then too, Khalil had refused to listen to calls to evacuate her land, as she was unwilling to leave the vulnerable sea turtles behind.

In a 2017 interview with CNN, she recalled staying put during the 2006 war, saying she had refused to leave as “it was the hatching season.”

“One of the rockets came into the house and blew up,” she recounted. “Me and my animals were all traumatized and I lost a bit of my hearing.”

Tributes to Khalil poured in on Saturday from local and international conservation groups.

Julien Jreissati, program director at Greenpeace Middle East and North Africa, said Khalil had “dedicated decades of her life to protecting the sea turtles and coastline of Mansouri.”

“Her loss is not only a loss for her family and community, but for the environmental movement in Lebanon and the region,” he told AFP.

Local environmental group Green Southerners on X mourned “a pioneering environmental defender” who for decades “dedicated her life to protecting endangered sea turtles and their nesting habitats.”

“Through the Orange House, she inspired generations of Lebanese to value and protect their natural heritage and coastal ecosystems,” it added.

Khalil was “a well-rounded person — extremely tough, extremely kind,” her sister, Amal Khalil, told the Times.

Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah erupted in March after over a year of relative quiet, when the Iran-backed terror group renewed its rocket fire on Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei at the start of the US-Israeli bombing campaign in Iran on February 28.

Hezbollah at the time also cited Israel’s continued presence and strikes in Lebanon since the November 2024 Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire agreement, which had ended over a year of hostilities initiated by the terror group.

Israel has said its continued operations in Lebanon since the 2024 agreement were required because the Lebanese government had failed to carry out its obligation under the deal to disarm Hezbollah and it was thwarting immediate threats.

Hezbollah’s renewed attacks on Israel in March triggered massive Israeli airstrikes and a full-scale invasion of southern Lebanon, where authorities say more than 4,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced. The figures to not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

The IDF says it has since early March killed over 2,500 Hezbollah operatives, including hundreds of members of the terror group’s elite Radwan Force.

Israeli forces have lost 35 IDF soldiers and a Defense Ministry civilian contractor since March 2. Two civilians were also killed by Hezbollah rockets, and an Israeli civilian was mistakenly killed in the north by Israeli artillery shelling.