'They killed her dream:' Israel strike leaves Lebanese woman footballer in coma

Dylan Collins with Joseph Abi Chahine Lebanese footballer Celine Haidar was about to make her dream of playing for the national women's team come true, but debris from an Israeli strike left the 19-year-old in a medically induced coma.

After full-blown war erupted in September, Haidar's family were among more than a million people who fled south Beirut and other Hezbollah strongholds, as Israeli bombs rained down. "But Celine had to come back to (south) Beirut for her studies and training," her father Abbas Haidar told AFP. "She would leave the house after evacuation calls were issued or bombing intensified, then she'd come back home at night to sleep," he said.

Now, she is the latest athlete to become a casualty of Israeli strikes, which already forced the Lebanese Football Association to postpone all domestic football competitions indefinitely.

On Saturday, her father called her to warn of new evacuation orders published by the Israeli military online and she left the house.
But soon after, "my wife called to tell me Celine was in the hospital," he said. She had been seriously wounded in an Israeli strike on her home neighbourhood of Shiyah, as the air force pummelled Beirut's southern suburbs.

Cracked skull

Footage of Haidar lying unconscious on the ground, her face covered in blood, while a young man beside her cried in pain took Lebanese social media by storm. "The strike was close and she was hit in the head," her mother Sanaa Shahrour told AFP. "My daughter has a brain haemorrhage, her skull is cracked." She said her daughter had sent her a message asking her to prepare her favourite dish, but "an hour later her friend called to say she had been wounded."

"My daughter is a heroine," she said, her eyes red with tears. "She's strong. She will get back up and play again," she said. "She dreamt of competing abroad. She said she wanted to be like (Cristiano) Ronaldo and (Lionel) Messi... She wanted to be a star and for everyone to talk about her. "Now everyone is talking about her because she was wounded in a war that she has nothing to do with," she said.
"She has beautiful dreams," she said, but "they killed her dream."

'A fighter' on the pitch

Haidar was a pillar of her club, Beirut Football Academy (BFA), which won the Lebanese Women's Football League last season without dropping a single point, and was due to don the captain's armband this season.

The midfielder was also part of the national women's Under-18 team that won the 2022 West Asian Football Federation championship.
Now she is in a medically induced coma, team manager Ziad Saade said.

"The doctors are following her very closely," her father told AFP from the Saint George Hospital in Beirut where his daughter is being treated.
"But her injuries are serious, we hope she will gradually heal," he said with tears in his eyes. "We're paying the price for something that's not our fault."

"On the pitch, she's a fighter, she was the link between defence and attack," coach Samer Barbary said, as he and teammates visited her at the hospital. "She is an exceptional girl and an excellent player."

Agence France-Presse