Lebanon turtle conservation pioneer Mona Khalil dies after Israeli strike

Mona Khalil died at 76 after an Israeli strike hit the beachfront home she had refused to leave, severing a life that had become inseparable from the Mansouri shore she helped save. She was wounded on June 4, treated first at Jabal Amel Hospital in Tyre, then transferred to the American University of Beirut Medical Center in Beirut, where she remained hospitalized for about two weeks before succumbing to her injuries on June 19, 2026.

Khalil founded the Orange House Project around 2000 in Mansouri, near Tyre in southern Lebanon, but her conservation work began earlier, in 1999, after she saw a turtle laying eggs on the beach. From that moment, she devoted more than two decades to protecting loggerhead and green sea turtles and turning the Mansouri coastline into one of the eastern Mediterranean’s most important nesting grounds. The Orange House, her beachfront eco-guesthouse, helped finance that work across a 1.4-kilometer stretch of coast.

Her efforts went far beyond one beach. Khalil helped secure the area’s designation as a local hima reserve, managed by community members and local authorities, giving formal protection to a site that conservation groups say became a model for public stewardship. The Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon said the Hima Qoleileh-Mansouri coastline, a seven-kilometer stretch, hosts more than 58 endangered sea turtle nests each year, underscoring the ecological value of the ground Khalil spent decades defending.

The strike also injured her assistant, who reportedly suffered burns. Local reports said Khalil had refused to leave her home despite the war, choosing instead to stay on the beach that had anchored both her livelihood and her mission. Conservation advocates said her death erased not only a civilian life but a working system of environmental care built over years of patient protection, nesting surveys and community trust.

Tributes from Green Southerners and other activists described Khalil as one of Lebanon’s most dedicated environmental defenders and condemned the attack on a site long associated with biodiversity protection and public awareness. Some activists said the strike was not accidental, linking her killing to the wider toll the war has taken on civilians and on the fragile institutions that preserve Lebanon’s coastline.