قَالُوا۟ يَـٰوَيْلَنَآ إِنَّا كُنَّا ظَـٰلِمِينَ
Qaaloo yaa wailanaaa innaa kunnaa zaalimeen
"Vay başımıza gelenlere! Doğrusu biz haksızlık yapmış kimseleriz" dediler.
They said, "Woe to us! We were truly wrongdoers."
The confession is exactly right, and it arrives once the punishment is already underway. The verse after it reports that this cry became the only thing they went on saying, so the admission becomes the whole of what remains to them; commentators set it beside Pharaoh's declaration as the sea closed over him. Their word for themselves, ẓālimīn, is the one the surah had already used of their town.