Israeli strike leaves Lebanese footballer Celine Haidar in coma

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 was among more than a million people who fled south Beirut and other areas 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 in the neighbourhood of Chiyah, as the air force pummelled Beirut's southern suburbs.

AFP