New Delhi, June 22 -- Mourners gathered Sunday in Beirut to pay their respects to a much-loved Lebanese conservationist who died after succumbing to wounds sustained in an Israeli strike on her home on the country's southern coast.

Mona Khalil, who spent more than two decades protecting sea turtles along Lebanon's coastline, was critically injured in the strike on her home in the village of Mansouri earlier this month and died of her wounds Friday. She was 76.

The Orange House, which Khalil helped build into a small conservation hub and ecotourism site in Mansouri, became a refuge for endangered loggerhead and green sea turtles and a training ground for volunteers documenting nesting activity along the coast.

News of her death triggere...