CrossFireArabia
Lebanon’s National News Agency says the people of in the southern district of Beirut experienced their most horrific night since the start of the Israeli occupation’s aggression on the country, as the Israeli army pounded several places with more than 30 airstrikes.
marwan
Hezbollah announced it killed 17 Israeli officers and soldiers in battles in south Lebanon., Thursday. In contrast, the Israeli army stated an officer and a soldier were killed in battles in southern Lebanon, Wednesday, while rockets from southern Lebanon caused fires in the border town of Matla in northern Israel.
Hezbollah also announced more than once, Thursday, Israeli forces detonated explosive devices during their attempts to infiltrate southern Lebanon. Israel’s Golani Brigade detonated explosive devices while it tried to go around west of Marun al-Ras in southern Lebanon.
Israeli media reported that helicopters rushed to the areas of clashes on the border with Lebanon to transport dead soldiers, indicating it was a dangerous and unusually difficult security task.
The Israeli army admitted the death of an officer at the rank of captain in the 202nd battalion of the paratroopers brigade and a soldier in battles in southern Lebanon Wednesday, but avoided mentioning any of the deaths in today’s skirmishes.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Fire and Rescue Authority announced that a fire broke out in the town of Matla after rockets were fired from Lebanon and said that its crews were working to put it out.
The Israeli Home Front asked the residents of the northern Golan towns to stay near underground shelters and not to congregate and to reduce movement. It also asked the residents of the city of Safed to stay near the fortified areas and refrain from getting together.
As well, the settlement municipality of Nahariya, in Israel’s northwest, asked all residents to stay near the fortified places and not to go out except in cases of extreme necessity.
This comes amid a continuous escalation with the continuation of heavy Israeli raids on villages and towns in southern Lebanon and on the southern suburb of Beirut amid attempts to invade the country by land, and in the light of Hezbollah’s response to them and the firing of dozens of rockets a day towards barracks and settlements in northern Israel as reported by Al Jazeera.
CrossFireArabia
Families fleeing violence in Lebanon are struggling to find safety in shelters across the country with at least one million people – a fifth of the population – now displaced with half leaving their homes in the past four days, Save the Children said.
Numbers are expected to swell following new relocation orders issued by Israeli forces on Tuesday, demanding residents in more than two dozen villages in the south of Lebanon to relocate north of the Awali River, approximately 50 km into the country.
The beginning of ground military operations has been widely reported by media as well as air attacks across Lebanon, including strikes on Ein El Helwe, the largest refugee camp in Lebanon, that reportedly killed seven people, including four children.
The speed of the crisis is placing immense pressure on hospitals, with over 37 Primary Health Care Centres forced to close due to safety concerns, while airstrikes have severely damaged 25 water facilities, leaving 300,000 people without access to clean water.
Over 154,000 displaced people are currently taking refuge in 851 active shelters, including public schools, with 70% of them already at full capacity, and only some equipped with proper showers, sanitation facilities, hot water and heating. Others are staying with host families, often in overcrowded conditions.
Since 23 September, Save the Children has distributed relief items to over 27,000 individuals, including 11,000 children, across 70 shelters, such as blankets, mattresses, hygiene kits, and bottled water. Distributions are ongoing in the North, Bekaa, West Bekaa, Rashaya, Mount Lebanon, Saida, Sour, and Beirut.
The rate of displacement is unprecedented. During the 2016 Lebanon-Israel conflict, a similar number of people were forcibly displaced – over 970,000 – over the course of one month.
According to media reports, about 60,000 Israelis have been displaced from their homes in northern Israel.
Almost 2,000 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon, including 104 children, and over 8,000 have been injured, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health.
Ahmad*, 37, a father of daughters aged two years and seven months, spent a day on the road seeking safety and is now staying at a shelter in Mount Lebanon. He said:
“My wife and I are terrified about what might happen next. We’re scared for our daughters. What if something happens to them? And if something happens to us, what will become of them? Our 7-month-old cries constantly because she senses our fear; she can tell her mother is frightened, and now we’re passing that fear on to her and her two-year-old sister.”
“We need diapers and baby food, proper clothes, and basic necessities. We couldn’t bring anything with us, we barely managed to grab our children and ran for our lives.”
Abir* is a 35 -year-old mother of three children, aged 10, eight and five. Her family fled their village in the south after it was bombed and is now staying in a shelter supported by Save the Children in Mount Lebanon. She said:
“It breaks our hearts to have left our home, but we had to put our feelings aside for the sake of our children. Our village, which had never been targeted before, was bombed, and our children were already terrified by the sonic booms and fake raids.
I barely managed to pull myself together. We had prepared a bag, knowing for almost a year that we needed to be ready, but nothing could have prepared us for the carnage that erupted on 23 September. It took us a full day to travel from South Lebanon to Mount Lebanon, an exhausting journey with no final destination. At first, we had no idea where we were heading; all my husband knew was that we had to escape as quickly as possible. I worry about how my children will cope with all of this. I know the scars this experience will leave on them, and it weighs heavily on my heart.”
Jennifer Moorehead, Save the Children’s Country Director in Lebanon said:
“Children all over the country are affected by this escalating violence, their lives turned upside down almost overnight as they lose their home and sense of safety. There are families in shelters, but also so many still in their cars or in the streets of Beirut, looking for some place to go. The sense of terror is palpable. Our teams are saying that more than anything, families are paralysed by the fear of the unknown.
Children will be disproportionately affected by this armed conflict. As in all recent armed conflicts, children will number too many among casualties.
Schools are closed, shelters and hospitals in Lebanon are under growing pressure, and we are doing our best to support displaced families, but with the launch of ground military operations in southern Lebanon, we are now inevitably going to see even more large-scale forced displacement and destruction.
Children’s lives in Lebanon and in the whole region are hanging in the balance. We call for an immediate ceasefire to prevent further suffering, ensure safe humanitarian access, and stop the conflict from escalating further across the region.”
Save the Children has been working in Lebanon since 1953. Since October 2023, we’ve been scaling up our response in Lebanon, supporting displaced Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian children and families, and now have escalated an emergency response throughout the country in 70 shelters. Since October 2023, we’ve supported 71,000 people, including 31,000 children, with cash, blankets, mattresses and pillows, food parcels, water bottles and kits containing essential hygiene items.
CrossFireArabia
Maryam Srour, a field communications manager for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) from Beirut, Lebanon, reported from a car as she fled, describing scenes of chaos in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
On Friday 27/09/2024, we heard and felt a huge series of blasts while we were in meetings at the office.
We wrapped up work and got stuck in heavy traffic. I had just relocated to a safer place since the bombing around Beirut and across the country intensified on Monday. When I reached my new home around 10 p.m., my relatives had already joined us – leaving their homes, thinking it would be safer where we were.
From my balcony, I saw dozens and dozens of people walking in the streets carrying what they could, plastic bags, backpacks, or nothing. People in the southern suburbs around ours had received evacuation orders from the Israeli armed forces. We saw people fleeing on foot, some walking with sticks, young and elderly. Some people were in cars. We were not in the neighborhood that was targeted but we heard drones and planes. We felt them close by.
Suddenly, there was darkness all around and bombing started everywhere. There was heavy smoke and people in the streets were coughing. I was with my mum, brother and sister, and trying to figure out what to do next. Are the roads safe? Where do we go?
I had just left my house in *Dahieh—* the southern suburb of Beirut—a few days ago because of the heavy bombardments and moved to this one. We thought we would be safer here. Now we had to leave again. I grabbed a bag of essential items I had at hand. We were told that it’s better to bring mattresses, so we stuffed two in our car and took a pack of water bottles. I didn’t know what to do. There were fires everywhere following the airstrikes, and I heard a huge blast. We heard, felt and saw the strikes. Our building was shaking. There was a huge blast in a place with no advance warning for evacuation.
Surrounded by fire and smoke, I was repeating to myself, “all we need is a plan and to take action, a plan and take action; do not wait here.” We just left the place as fast as we could. I don’t know what happened to my own house, or the new house. We kept calling around and drove for a couple of hours before we figured out where to go. Around 5 a.m, we found a place on the other side of the mountains.
We were very lucky that we left when we did because the fires after the airstrikes were still raging where we had been. We just needed a place to rest a little, to see where to go next, and we still haven’t slept.
Some people are still in cars. Now we’re watching the news and shocking footage of what is happening. I know that my colleagues, MSF teams, are in the field, supplying water by trucks to shelters and schools in Beirut and Mount Lebanon, where displaced families are staying. Some people are lying down on the sidewalks. MSF managed to provide 86,000 liters of water in 24 hours, and is also distributing kits containing basic hygiene and relief items, as well as mattresses to the displaced people.
Our mental health teams are on the streets providing psychological first aid to people who are traumatized and to people seeking refuge in schools. I am used to being a humanitarian worker, but now I am also a person displaced by air strikes in my own country. We are in a safe place, for now.
CrossFireArabia
Israeli warplanes attacked a TV channel headquarters in Beirut late Monday, marking the first targeting of a Lebanese media institution amid a massive offensive on Lebanon.
According to an Anadolu reporter, an Israeli airstrike hit the headquarters of pro-Hezbollah Al-Sirat TV channel in Beirut’s southern suburb, leveling the building.
Shortly before the attack, the Israeli army ordered staffers to leave, claiming that the site was being used for producing “combat means.”
No injuries were reported in the attack.
Hezbollah, for its part, denied storing weapons inside civilian buildings hit by Israeli warplanes, including Al-Sirat TV channel headquarters according to Anadolu.
Since Sept. 23, Israel has launched massive airstrikes against what it calls Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, killing more than 1,057 people and injuring over 2,950 others, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
Several Hezbollah leaders have been killed in the assault, including its leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Hezbollah and Israel have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed nearly 41,600 people, most of them women and children, following a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas last October.
The international community has warned that Israeli attacks in Lebanon could escalate the Gaza conflict into a wider regional war.
