SIDON, Lebanon (AP) — Women in black screamed in grief and toddlers sobbed uncontrollably, calling out for their dead fathers and uncles.

Men in uniforms, pistols strapped to their belts, wept openly for their comrades at the funerals on Saturday for 13 Lebanese state security officers killed in an Israeli airstrike the day before.

In the past week, similar funeral scenes have played out hundreds of times across Lebanon as Israel intensified attacks against what it says are Iran-backed Hezbollah infrastructure and militants.

The Israel-Hezbollah war — raging in the shadow of the larger U.S.-Israeli war on Iran — has so far killed more than 2,000 people in Lebanon and wounded thousands more.

But Friday’s killing of so many state security personnel at once, when an Israeli airstrike hit their office headquarters in the southern town of Nabatiyeh, has struck a particular nerve, coming just two days after Israeli strikes on Beirut and beyond killed over 350 people in one of the deadliest single bombing campaigns in crisis-wracked Lebanon’s history.

“We just want protection,” said Adam Tarhini, a 20-year-old computer science student, whose father, Hassan Tarhini, was among the officers killed in Friday’s attack.

“Where is the state?” Historic negotiations at a sensitive time The outrage at the funeral reflects the prevailing mood across the country as Lebanon and Israel, which do not maintain diplomatic relations, prepare to start direct talks next week in the United States, for the first time in decades.

The prospect of the talks has sent anti-government protesters into the streets and piled pressure on Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who has demanded a truce as a condition for negotiations.

Israel insists the talks in Washington have nothing to do with a ceasefire and will focus on the disarmament of Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah militant group.

“We want to achieve complete dismantlement of Hezbollah’s weapons, and a serious and true peace agreement,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday.

That’s a hard sell to Lebanese who saw Israeli strikes kill dozens in the hours before Netanyahu spoke, local authorities report.

According to Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the war has “once again given Hezbollah and its supporters the ammunition they need to say that they are, in fact, resisting Israel.” “Now we have added to that an element of domestic tension and kind of an underlying threat of civil unrest,” she added.

Salam said Saturday he has postponed his planned trip to Washington, citing “the current internal situation.” Though his absence should not derail the talks — the first round is expected to be at the ambassadorial level — Salam’s announcement that he would stay in Beirut to “preserve the security and unity of the Lebanese people” cast a....