The Jewish state’s fighter jets have attacked both uninhabited towns and civilian targets, comparing them all to ammunition depots or Hezbollah launch pads. A doctor speaks of a “massacre” and there are fears that there are still a large number of bodies under the rubble. The great exodus from the south, although some choose to stay and remain hidden in the villages. In some Christian-majority districts of Beirut, they have requisitioned empty houses and buildings under construction, under pressure from the militants.
Beirut () – Last weekend, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his grave concern about Lebanon and the possibility of it becoming “another Gaza.” This prophecy was fulfilled yesterday, and many regions of the Land of the Cedars experienced the terrifying storm of fire that the Palestinian enclave has been subjected to for almost a year. The funeral dance of the Israeli air force, which moves unhindered in Lebanese airspace, has so far left almost 500 dead and nearly 1,600 wounded in the country. The Jewish state’s F-35s have been merciless against targets located in uninhabited areas as well as civilian targets – arbitrarily – equated to ammunition depots and rocket launching platforms.
“In a country that does not have any air raid shelters, the number of hundreds of confirmed victims should continue to increase with the counting of those left under the rubble,” observes the correspondent of a local television station in western Bekaa. “It is a catastrophe, a massacre,” denounces the AFP Jamal Badrane, a doctor at the Secours populaire hospital in Nabatieh, the capital of the governorate of the same name with a population of around 35,000, said: “The attacks have not stopped. They bombed us while we were transporting the wounded.”
The displaced from the south were concentrated in large numbers in the capital and in Saïda, and had to be housed in makeshift facilities, despite an emergency plan drawn up by a ministerial crisis unit. There was also a massive exodus of people from the southern outskirts, which are considered a stronghold of Hezbollah. According to persistent rumours circulating since this morning, in some Christian-majority neighbourhoods of Beirut bordering the southern suburbs, empty houses and buildings under construction have been requisitioned under pressure from the militants.
A nightmare on the roads
The mass exodus has been a real ordeal for tens of thousands of Lebanese, trapped in their cars or vans, carrying only the bare necessities, on roads jammed with vehicles. It takes more than ten hours to travel the distance from Tyre to the capital (about 86 kilometres), according to witnesses who arrived exhausted in Beirut. Standing on the edge of Beirut’s Corniche Maritime, on Avenue des Français, a man who had waited for hours for his family to arrive from southern Lebanon, said with a certain pragmatism, in front of the microphones of a local television station: “We are lucky because we have emergency shelter, but woe to those who don’t have it.”
This rush on the roads was triggered by alarming warnings from the Israeli army, which called on the Lebanese to “stay away until further notice from villages and buildings where Hezbollah weapons are stored.” These warnings were reinforced by anonymous phone calls that many citizens received on their devices. Even the Lebanese Ministries of Information and Culture, in the heart of Beirut, received such communications. Government agencies managed to expose the deception, but it did not fail to cause concern among public employees. “We know how far Israel’s madness can go and the impunity it enjoys internationally,” said a senior official interviewed by Ici-Beirut.
A terrible night
Tens of thousands of Lebanese spent a terrible night in various schools and public buildings in Saïda and Beirut. Dozens of families were crammed into the classrooms and halls of the Dékouané hotel school on the northern outskirts of Beirut, where Hezbollah men brought in mattresses, bottled water and sandwiches. “We left home with nothing but the clothes on our backs,” laments one woman. “They have not spared any region,” she continues. “We are very nervous. Where can we go?” Her son, for his part, managed to save the canary by taking it with him. Volunteers from President Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) helped welcome the refugees at the state-run school for girls in Baabda. “It is as if the classroom space had become elastic, just like in Gaza,” observed one of the operators who were in the makeshift reception structure.
“Some families without resources asked us to evacuate them,” explains Georges Kettaneh, president of the Lebanese Red Cross. “But that is not our job. Our priority is hospital emergencies and the safety of our ambulance drivers. South of the Litani River we cannot move without being coordinated with the international force, otherwise our ambulances could be attacked. We also had to help transport some seriously injured people from one hospital to another. What delayed us was mainly the traffic on the roads. Our ambulances – continues the director – got stuck in traffic jams, like all the others. But we will not leave anyone without help.”
Hidden in the villages
The Ministry of Health reported that thousands of families had fled the bombed areas, but thousands of citizens had preferred to stay hidden in their villages, far from the combat zones, to avoid the equally deadly risks of emergency travel. Dozens of motorists witnessed the Israeli air force’s bombing of Ghaziya, south of Saïda, live and stunned, as if in a television film. “Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets at Israel, but not a single surface-to-air rocket worried the American defense systems. We are animals, subhumans who must be massacred,” said a Lebanese man by telephone, whose family has decided to remain in the south.
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