Israel’s heavy and continuous bombardments across Lebanon have spread panic throughout the country. The strikes have hit hospitals, medical centres and ambulances according to the Lebanese health minister, Firass Abiad (who, despite false reporting in some Israeli media, is not a member of Hezbollah). Images and videos circulating on social media show immense destruction of civilian infrastructure from the attacks throughout the country: a road in the south turned to dust, an ambulance in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa valley engulfed in flames, and a town in the south almost completely flattened, with smoke rising from flaming piles of rubble.
Traffic came to a standstill on the southern highway on Monday (23 September), as thousands of families rushed to escape the siege. In videos circulated on social media, plumes of black smoke from Israeli airstrikes rise above the traffic. “Strikes were beside the car,” 51-year-old Mahmoud Alawi told me at a displacement shelter in Beirut. He had arrived at the shelter on Monday afternoon with his wife and two young children after fleeing his village near the southern city of Tyre in the morning when Israel intensified its strikes. His family are among the half a million people in Lebanon now estimated to be displaced from the fighting. “They’re scared, Israel could target anywhere, civilians too,” he said.
Monday was Lebanon’s deadliest day in nearly two decades. Lebanese authorities said the Israeli strikes killed at least 569 people, including 50 children, and injured 1,835. The number killed in one day was almost half of those killed in the entire 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006. “The past two days were harder than 2006,” Alawi told me, who lived through the war in his southern village with a population of about 200 people. He told me that Israel’s strikes killed 32 people and injured 17 from just his village, alone. “They were my neighbours, they’re civilians,” he said.
There was no let up in Israel’s pounding of what it claims were Hezbollah military targets the following day. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Tuesday 24 September that over the past 24 hours it had struck 1,500 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, in what was the beginning of an “extensive wave of attacks”. Israeli strikes continued with force the next day, with the IDF hitting some areas for the first time in the conflict.
Hezbollah joined the fight against Israel on 8 October, working under the umbrella of the Iran-led “axis of resistance”. Israel’s attacks since the deadly pager explosions across Lebanon last week are a severe escalation from the cross-border strikes that had taken place regularly over the past year. They also follow Israel’s announcement earlier this month of a “new phase” of war in the north. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on 24 September that Israel would continue to “pound Hezbollah targets”.
A staff member and contractor with the UN Agency for Refugees (UNHCR) were among those civilians killed in the airstrikes. “UNHCR is outraged by the killing of our colleagues, and we extend our deepest sympathies to their families and loved ones,” the agency said in a statement, urging for the protection of civilians in line with obligations under international humanitarian law.
“We should all be alarmed by the escalation. Lebanon is at the brink,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on 24 September during a meeting of world leaders at the UN General Assembly to call on Israel to refrain from a full-scale war. British foreign minister David Lammy announced that Britain was deploying military units to Cyprus to assist with any evacuation of its citizens from Lebanon. The next day, the Israeli army chief General Herzi Halevi reportedly told troops on the border with Lebanon that the airstrikes were intended “both to prepare the ground for your possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah”.
Outside the displacement shelter in Beirut, men, women, and children gathered in front of a stand distributing small plastic water bottles. They are among the over nearly 40,000 people now residing in the 283 schools Lebanon has opened to house the displaced. The shelter I visited is ordinarily a technical college for hospitality students; it is now housing around 500 families.
Unlike Israel, the Lebanese state is not able to afford accommodation for displaced families in hotels. The country has been suffering from an economic crisis since 2019. Many shelters in Lebanon – most of which are ordinarily warehouses or schools – were already overcrowded and underfunded prior to Israel’s escalation this week. Without enough government support, many Lebanese are stepping up to fill the gap. Posts are circulating on social media from people offering their rooms or couches to strangers fleeing. Volunteers have joined collective efforts to cook meals for those in shelters.
At the Beirut shelter, four women sat together on plastic chairs, taking slow puffs from a hookah. One of the women, who asked me not to share her name, said that they quickly left Beirut’s southern suburbs, commonly known as Dahiyeh, on Monday evening, after an airstrike hit the densely-packed neighborhood. Many Hezbollah operatives are known to live in the suburbs and in the 2006 war, Israel nearly reduced it to rubble.
Israel struck Beirut’s southern suburbs again on 24 September, killing a Hezbollah commander. The strike destroyed three floors of a six-story apartment building, leaving six dead and 15 others injured. Just four days before, a massive Israeli strike on another residential building in the suburbs killed over 37 people, including children, and wounded dozens of others. Rescue workers were searching for days after the strike to find the missing buried underneath the rubble.
Hezbollah released a statement on 24 September, which circulated on social media, pledging its support to “the steadfast Palestinian people” and “to defend Lebanon and its people”. The next day, and for the first time in the current conflict, the group launched a ballistic missile toward Tel Aviv, although it was intercepted by Israel’s advanced air defense systems.
“Hezbollah has changed the title of the war, from supporting Gaza to defending the Lebanese people,” Hassan Kotob, a Lebanese political researcher and analyst who lives in the southern city of Saida, told me. “Hezbollah feels the heat and feels they’re starting to lose support from its community and Iran.” Kotob said the group has faced “huge losses” to its arsenal and among its high ranking commanders in recent days. Israel said it destroyed “tens of thousands” of the group’s rockets, including cruise missiles, short-range heavy rockets and explosive drones. Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, expressed fears of a regional conflagration in a CNN interview on 24 September, saying that Hezbollah “cannot stand alone” against Israel. Kotob said that Iran’s statement has stirred doubt among the group’s supporters regarding its capabilities.
Meanwhile, ordinary Lebanese people attempt to go about their lives, but the anxiety of what might come pervades. At night, Israeli drones fly overhead, permeating the skies with their deadly hum. During the day, work meetings and daily routines are interrupted by the news of more airstrikes nearby in Beirut or elsewhere in the country – and the death toll climbs.
[See also: The Middle East on the brink]
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