Voices of Lebanon: People fleeing for their lives as Israel attacks
Twelve-year-old Zahra woke up afraid on Monday morning.
“I was so stressed because of the bombs,” the little girl from Borj Qalaouiye told Al Jazeera.
Zahra’s village lies between Nabatieh and Bint Jbeil in south Lebanon, but in October last year, she and her family fled to Laylaki in Beirut’s southern suburbs, shortly after Hezbollah and Israel began exchanging cross-border attacks.
On the same day, she got another fright.
“I was so scared and then I saw on the news they were going to bomb our building,” she said of the family’s refuge in Beirut.
On Monday morning, people around Lebanon – particularly in the southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley – received messages from unknown numbers warning them to leave their homes quickly.
Read the rest of our story to hear more voices from Lebanon as it reels from Israeli attacks.
"Dead bodies strewn on the side of the road": Displaced people describe fleeing south Lebanon
A day after fleeing Israel’s bombardment of southern Lebanon, one man is still shaken by what he witnessed there.
“There were dead bodies strewn on the side of the road, people with their arms blown off. Even the ambulances that tried to reach them were struck,” the man, who said his name is Ali, told CNN in Beirut.
His elderly parents tried to calm him down and his father picked up the conversation.
“Yesterday was non-stop bombardment from every direction. Barbaric and indiscriminate bombing. They have no mercy for animals, children or humans,” his father said.
Asked about Israeli claims that the targets were Hezbollah positions, the father said: “They are liars. Entire families gone. These are not Hezbollah targets. We live in the south, we don’t know where Hezbollah is and I don’t know where the Hezbollah fighters are. (Israel) destroyed houses and farms instead.”
Om Hussein’s family were also among the thousands who fled southern Lebanon. They spent 14 hours on the road to Beirut, stuck in congested roads, and reached the Lebanese capital at 5 a.m. local time on Tuesday. “We had no food or water, but volunteers on motorcycles distributed water to those stranded in cars,” she told CNN.
“We didn’t bring anything with us, no clothes, no medicine, nothing,” her mother said, describing how quickly they fled the Israeli bombardment. The family of eight is now in one of the numerous Beirut schools sheltering the displaced.
Israeli military air raids on Lebanon ongoing
Just now, the Israeli military is still striking targets across south Lebanon. In the last hour, they have hit 20 villages. This comes after Hezbollah said it hit 16 sites across northern Israel, including the Atlit naval base, which is just south of Haifa. It also said it fired three drones at the base; the Israeli military said they intercepted two of those drones.
In turn, the Israeli military announced that it hit over 1,500 sites in 200 areas in the last two days. That includes the strike this afternoon on Dahiyeh, the southern suburb of Beirut which is densely populated and it’s a residential area. We understand from the Lebanese Ministry of Health, six people have died in that strike and 15 have been injured.
The Israeli military has said that its attack helicopters and fighter jets have flown 3,000 hours combined across Lebanon – a huge number of raids and military missions. The total number of dead has reached 569 and 1,850 injured.
Hezbollah says targeted Israel base near Safad with dozens of rockets
Hezbollah has said it targeted a military base in north Israel near Safad twice with salvos of rockets, as Israel pounded Lebanon with air raids.
“In defence of Lebanon and its people”, Hezbollah targeted “the Dado base” near north Israel’s Safad – the headquarters of the Israeli military’s northern command – with a total of 90 rockets, the group said in two separate statements.
