Nearly 600 dead and 2,000 injured, thousands displaced: the latest strikes carried out by Israel in Lebanon have had unprecedented consequences since the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. In the cities spared so far, residents are preparing for the worst while their fellow citizens flee the nightmare of fighting.
Ambulance sirens wail throughout Beirut. It is just before 3 p.m. and Israel has once again struck a building in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, a few kilometers from a school converted into a reception center for internally displaced people, in the Bir Hassan neighborhood. The day had left six dead and fifteen wounded, according to what the Lebanese Health Ministry indicated late Tuesday afternoon. Security sources confirmed to Reuters the death of Ibrahim Kobeissi, a commander within Hezbollah.
The sound of the explosion resonated within the walls of the school. “It took us a long time to get here yesterday to a safer place,” he told the Duty Rayan Mustapha, 19, from Beit Lif, 110 kilometers south of Beirut. There were explosions everywhere, we couldn’t do anything…” At the sound of the explosion, she smiles. Located right on the border with occupied Palestine, her village is bombed almost daily by the Israeli army. On average, people fleeing the south took more than twelve hours to reach Beirut, compared to the usual two hours. The roads were also bombed.
In the classroom where the family has taken up residence: mattresses covered with a thin black mattress pad, desks and chairs pushed against the walls with faded paint, and a whiteboard on which a date is displayed in English in black marker: May 22, 2024, four months ago, almost to the day. Since then, Lebanon has descended into chaos and terror.
558 deaths in one day
Rayan Mustapha and his relatives are among thousands of people who have been forced to flee the fighting in southern Lebanon since October 7. But in recent days, its intensity has increased. On Monday alone, the English-language daily The Orient Today reported around 800 bombings all over Lebanon. According to figures from the Lebanese Ministry of Health, they resulted in the deaths of 558 people, including 50 children and 94 women. This contradicts the version of the Israeli authorities, who claim to be waging a war against combatant forces. The number of wounded stands at 1,835. Rescue workers have also lost their lives. Ambulances and fire trucks have been targeted, as well as a health center and a hospital in the south of the country. In July-August 2006, the war between Hezbollah and Israel, which lasted 33 days, left more than 1,200 dead on the Lebanese side, mostly civilians, and 160 on the Israeli side. These recent attacks are the deadliest in the country since the Lebanese civil war, according to the French-language daily The Orient-the-Day.
According to one of the managers of the reception center where Rayan Mustapha is staying, Khalil Mawla (affiliated with the Amal political party), there are between 180,000 and 300,000 displaced people in Lebanon today. Many shelters have opened throughout the country. Citizens are also organizing themselves for housing and basic needs for their compatriots driven out by the war.
“Just arrive safely”
Rayan Mustapha points to two large nylon shopping bags. “That’s all we took. We didn’t want to weigh ourselves down, we just wanted to arrive safely. We took our papers and a few everyday items,” sums up the young girl, dressed in long pink sportswear. Around her, her mother and aunt nod. Her little sister plays the paparazzi.
One floor below, Hassna Jaber smokes a cigarette, leaning on a window. She watches thick white smoke, in the distance, escape from one of the many buildings that seem piled on top of the others. This is where the attack has just taken place. A group of women come back up the stairs and express their concern to a manager of the center: they ask to change shelters, because they feel they are not safe there.
Hassna brushes aside the question of fear. “So what, even if it’s Dahieh [nom en arabe qui veut dire banlieue et qui est utilisé pour désigner la banlieue sud de Beyrouth, où l’école se trouve] and they bomb, the moment we have to die, we die,” says the sixty-year-old. Like thousands of other Lebanese caught in the middle of this war, she has seen death up close in recent days. “I smelled it right in front of us… But we didn’t imagine that they were going to bomb our village. We turned a blind eye,” says the mother.
Between resignation and tenacity
A few kilometers away, in the Haret Hreik neighborhood, bulldozers were still working Monday afternoon to clear away the rubble from the recent strikes. Here, too, the smell of death reigned. Hayat Termos has lived in this part of Beirut her whole life. For the past 11 months, she has lived to the rhythm of targeted attacks and bombings. For the young woman, leaving her family home was out of the question. “During the attack, I was at home. It seemed like the end of the world… But, despite everything, we have to defend our land. The Israelis have no right to take it from us like they did in Palestine,” claims the recent engineering graduate from the American University of Beirut. In her speech, as in that of a taxi driver who does not wish to give his first name, the martyr narrative returns. “If I have to die at 50, it’s because God wants it,” said the man, visibly angry, at the wheel of his sedan stuck in Beirut traffic.
Hospital services on alert
The car weaves its way as best it can through the capital’s clogged streets to head back up to one of the city’s main Christian neighborhoods. Here, the war has not yet struck. But it has still poured its share of wounded into the lair of the Hotel-Dieu de France, a major hospital in the capital. During the Israeli attacks on communications last week, which resulted in the deaths of 70 people, nearly a hundred seriously injured people were admitted in the space of a few hours.
The teams were mobilized for more than 12 hours, without respite. A few patients are still under observation today. Doctors and nurses are now preparing for the worst. “Today, we are trying to empty the department as much as possible to be ready to receive the injured,” explains the Duty the head nurse of the emergency department, Marie-Rose Karam. The same speech is heard at the American University of Beirut hospital, in Hamra, a Christian and Sunni neighborhood. During the attacks, 148 patients were admitted to the facility for amputations or loss of eyes. “We are waiting now, we are on alert,” summarizes Dr. Salah Zeineddine, the head of the hospital department.
Night has spread its black cloak over Lebanon. Another day is ending. In Beirut, the city is still as noisy as ever. But every sound like an explosion or a detonation makes you jump and raises questions. Faced with the uncertainty, chaos and fear that Israel has instilled in Lebanon in recent days, some displaced people continue to arrive at shelters. Others stop at relatives’ houses, in rentals, in Beirut and elsewhere. Still others continue further north. The inhabitants of Lebanon do not all live the same daily life in the face of war. But many share the same question: what will tomorrow bring?