Lebanese environmental activist Mona Khali l, whose decades-long efforts to protect endangered sea turtles transformed a stretch of south Lebanon's coastline into one of the eastern Mediterranean's most important conservation sites, has died from wounds sustained in an Israeli strike on her home earlier this month.
Khalil was injured when an Israeli air strike hit her home, known as the Orange House, on Mansouri beach near Tyre . She died on Friday after spending days in hospital undergoing treatment for severe injuries.
Her death prompted an outpouring of grief from environmentalists, journalists, activists and residents across Lebanon, many of whom described her as one of the country's most influential grassroots conservationists.
For more than a quarter of a century, Khalil dedicated her life to protecting the endangered loggerhead and green sea turtles that nest along Lebanon's southern coast. What began with a chance encounter on a beach in the late 1990s became a lifelong mission that earned her international recognition.
Born in Lagos, Nigeria, to a Lebanese family in 1949, Khalil spent years abroad before returning to south Lebanon. In 2000, she and her partner Habiba Fayyad established the Orange House, a pioneering eco-tourism and environmental project overlooking Mansouri beach.
The site evolved into far more than a guesthouse, becoming a sanctuary for wildlife, a centre for environmental education and research, and a gathering place for volunteers, activists and visitors from around the world.
Khalil devoted herself to protecting turtle nesting sites, documenting marine life and campaigning against environmental destruction and encroachment on Lebanon's coastline. Through years of war, political instability and economic crisis, she continued her work on the beach she loved.
Her cousin, journalist Ramsay Short, remembered her as a woman who refused to abandon her home despite the dangers.
"You always refused to leave your home on Orange House in the south of our beautiful Lebanon," he wrote in a tribute shared online.
"You protected the turtles, you led incredible conservation efforts, and opened your home to so many of us, family, friends and strangers alike," he added.
Short described Khalil as someone who had endured profound personal tragedies throughout her life with "exceptional dignity and grace" and whose warmth left a lasting impression on everyone she met.
"You had a profound effect on everyone who met you," he wrote. "May the ocean take you on its waves to a better world dearest Mona."
Environmental activist Maya Chams Ibrahimchah said Khalil's life's work began with a single moment on a dark beach in Mansouri in 1999, when she witnessed a sea turtle emerge from the Mediterranean to lay her eggs.
"For most people, it would have been a fleeting moment. For Mona Khalil, it became a life's calling," Ibrahimchah wrote in a post on Instagram.
"She understood something that many of us spend a lifetime trying to learn: that greatness is not measured by what we take from the world, but by what we leave behind," she added.
Ibrahimchah said Khalil's legacy would endure not only through the conservation movement she helped build, but through the generations of sea turtles that will continue returning to Lebanon's shores long into the future.
"She defended a beach when others saw real estate. She fought corruption with determination and cared for vulnerable creatures with extraordinary gentleness and generosity," she wrote.
"Long after the noise of our time has faded, long after our names have been forgotten, her turtles will still be swimming beneath these waters. That is her monument. That is her legacy," she added.
For many in south Lebanon, Khalil became synonymous with Mansouri beach itself. Her efforts helped establish the coastline as one of the region's most important nesting grounds for endangered sea turtles and inspired countless volunteers, researchers and environmental advocates.
Even as Israeli attacks repeatedly battered south Lebanon, she remained committed to protecting the fragile ecosystem she believed belonged to future generations.
Israel's war on Lebanon has killed at least 3,980 people and wounded more than 12,001 others since 2 March, including women and children.