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Israeli airstrikes continued to pound Lebanon on Friday, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes in densely populated neighbourhoods to seek shelter elsewhere, as aid groups warned the escalating conflict could lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.
“We’re sleeping here in the streets — some in cars, some on the street, some on the beach,” said Jamal Seifeddin, 43, who spent the night outside in the capital’s downtown district.
“No one even brought a blanket.”
The southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, were again targeted by Israeli airstrikes on Friday as it traded blows with the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah.
After the U.S. and Israeli attacks against Iran started a week ago, Hezbollah on Monday launched missiles and drones into Israel for the first time in over a year. Israel retaliated with bombardment of southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs.
At least 217 people have been killed and hundreds more have since been injured, Lebanon’s Health Ministry says.
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Hadi Kaakour, a resident who was fleeing Beirut’s southern suburbs, said he is not sure he will be safe anywhere.
“We don’t put anything past [Israel], they will strike us no matter where we go,” he said.
Others expressed frustration at Lebanon being pulled into the war.
“We got sucked into a mess that we have nothing to do with,” said Yousef Nabulsi, another resident fleeing the area.
“People have been displaced and are now staying on the streets, and this is wrong.”
Israel’s military on Thursday ordered Lebanese residents out of Beirut’s southern suburbs, including areas controlled by Hezbollah, as well as parts of the eastern Bekaa Valley, after ordering people out of a swathe of south Lebanon.
It was Israel’s widest evacuation order ever against Lebanon and prompted an exodus of people from the south before bombardments turned buildings into rubble, took the facades off apartment blocks and smashed up the roads.
“It’s just panic right now,” Bachir Ayoub, country director at Oxfam in Lebanon, told CBC News.
He said roughly a third of the country is now under evacuation orders and that many of those trying to flee on Thursday were stuck in their cars for up to six hours due to gridlock.
There’s “a lot of fatigue” among the evacuees, for whom “this is the second or third time within 14 months of being displaced,” he said, referring to the previous wave of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel in 2024.
The U.S. and Israel-Iran war has crossed into Lebanon, with airstrikes in the capital of Beirut and Israeli ground forces moving in through the south. The Israel Defence Forces are urging the evacuation of civilians in the regions, as they ramp up bombing against Hezbollah forces, the militant group and Iranian proxy based in Lebanon.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has called on the international community to help stop Israel’s attacks.
“A humanitarian disaster is looming” because of huge displacements of people, Salam said, speaking to heads of diplomatic missions in Beirut on Friday.
Salam criticized both Israel and Hezbollah, saying that the Lebanese state and people “did not choose this war.”
(Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images)
Likewise, the aid group Save the Children warned that displacing up to 500,000 people in southern Beirut could result in a humanitarian catastrophe.
“Forced displacement strips children of almost everything that keeps them safe: shelter, education, community and routine,” said the NGO’s regional director Ahmad Alhendawi in a statement.
“A forced relocation without any guarantees of safety or return and without providing for the needs of the population would amount to a grave breach of international humanitarian law.”
Imran Riza, the UN’s humanitarian co-ordinator in Lebanon, says roughly 100,000 people had fled to shelters by Friday — though that number of displaced is expected to rapidly increase due to the “unprecedented” scale of the evacuations.
Meanwhile, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich warned Thursday that the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Hezbollah has a strong presence, will look like a city in the Gaza Strip that Israel flattened during its war with Hamas.
“You wanted to bring hell on us, we are bringing hell on you,” Smotrich said as he toured towns on Israel’s border with Lebanon. “Dahiyeh will look like Khan Younis, and our citizens of the north will live in peace and quiet.”
Riza, with the UN, said more than a million people were uprooted in Lebanon during the 2024 war between Hezbollah and Israel, 75 to 80 per cent of whom were not in shelters.
“This time again, the majority will not be in shelters probably,” he said.
The Lebanese army pulled back from the border as the Israeli troops moved in, while Hezbollah has issued a series of statements announcing attacks on Israeli troops attempting to advance.
Hezbollah, in a message published in Hebrew on its Telegram channel early on Friday, warned Israelis to leave towns within five kilometres of the border.
“Your military’s aggression against Lebanese sovereignty and safe citizens, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the expulsion campaign it is carrying out will not go unchallenged,” it said.
There have been no reported fatalities in Israel as a result of Hezbollah attacks.
During fighting between Hezbollah and Israel in 2024, tens of thousands of Israelis were evacuated from towns in the border area but many have since returned. Israeli officials have previously said there are no plans to remove them for now.