Renowned turtle conservationist Mona Khalil was injured in an Israeli attack in southern Lebanon.
Posted June 21, 2026
Mourners have gathered in Beirut to pay their respects to a much-loved Lebanese conservationist who died from injuries caused by an Israeli attack on her home on the country's southern coast.
Mona Khalil, 77, who spent more than two decades protecting sea turtles along Lebanon's coast, was seriously injured in the attack in the village of al-Mansouri in Tire province on June 4 and succumbed to her injuries more than two weeks later on Friday.
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The news of her death caused great grief among environmentalists and those who volunteered and worked with her over the years, many of whom gathered in Beirut on Sunday.
The Orange House Project, which Khalil helped build as a small conservation center and ecotourism site in al-Mansouri, became a refuge for endangered loggerhead and green turtles and a training ground for volunteers documenting nesting activity along the coast.
Khalil was born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1949. He held Dutch and Lebanese citizenship, having lived in the Netherlands before returning to Lebanon and settling in what was once his grandmother's house, the building that would later be known as the Orange House.
At the center of Khalil's work was a narrow coastal strip, al-Mansouri Beach, where a fleeting encounter with a turtle that had emerged from the ocean to lay its eggs in 1999 propelled her on a lifelong journey dedicated to animals.
Each nesting season, Khalil and volunteers patrolled the beach at night, marking new footprints in the sand and carefully relocating vulnerable nests away from human activity and coastal light pollution.
Journalist and environmental activist Fadia Jomaa met Khalil in 2016 while researching sea turtles in Lebanon and then decided to volunteer for his 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 convinced her to evacuate for her safety.
“She was the last to leave the area,” Jomaa said.
“He had a terrible time in Beirut,” the journalist said, adding that Khalil longed to return to the south, to the Orange House and the beach he had protected for years.
“She used to say, 'My soul will stay here,'” Jomaa said, recalling conversations in which Khalil would point out an olive tree or a small hill overlooking al-Mansouri beach. “She used to say, 'This is where you'll bury me.'”
Where Khalil will ultimately be buried remains uncertain and is linked to the security situation in the area, Jomaa said.
