Schools turn to shelters as thousands flee across Lebanon

They came in their tens of thousands, fleeing the smouldering ruins of southern Lebanon with whatever they could balance on the tops of their cars or stuff into the backs of lorries.

As Lebanon reeled from its bloodiest day since the end of the country’s civil war 34 years ago, many of those living in proximity to the Israeli border were confronted with an agonising choice on Monday.

They could either stay in their homes and ignore the warning given to them by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister; or they could brave the dangerous and deserted mountain passes that were themselves under fire.

For Baqir and his extended family, residents of the village of Tebnine, the ever-growing proximity of the falling bombs left them with little option but to make the hazardous journey away from the hills of the south.

He and 40 other relatives and neighbours gathered what they could and then drove in convoy through deserted passes, inching forward cautiously as their terrified children sat in silence in the back seats of their cars.

“There were bombs going off in front of us and bombs going off behind us,” he said. “It was a terrifying three-hour journey before we reached the highway.”

Finally safe, they joined hordes of others on the clogged highway north who were also fleeing the most extensive airstrikes carried out in the history of the Israeli Air Force.

Since Monday morning, it has struck more than 1,600 targets across southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley to the east of Beirut.

Many of those escaping had hoped to join relatives in the southern, predominantly Shia suburbs of the Lebanese capital – although it was far from safe even there, with Israeli forces striking the area for the second time in two days.

Israeli military officials claimed that the Beirut attack had killed Ibrahim Qubaisi, the Hezbollah commander in charge of the group’s missile apparatus, as he met other senior officers.

Lebanon’s health minister said the strikes had killed six people but Hezbollah made no comment.

The strikes were the latest in a series of “decapitation strikes” aimed at killing those in charge of planning and leading Hezbollah’s battlefield operations.

Qubaisi’s death would cap a highly successful week for Israel in which it incapacitated thousands of Hezbollah members after blowing up their electronic devices and then assassinated several senior commanders in an air strike on Beirut last Friday.

Whether or not the strategy is eroding Hezbollah’s capacity to strike across the border remains to be seen, although Israeli military officials believe they have caused significant damage to the group’s capabilities.

Hezbollah continued firing rockets into northern Israel on Tuesday, striking the outskirts of the city of Haifa for a second day – but it has not yet deployed its most potent guided missiles.

The impact of Operation Northern Arrows, as Israel has named its offensive, have been unquestionably devastating in Lebanon.

At least 558 people have been killed and 1,800 more wounded since the early hours of Monday, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, nearly half as many as the number of fatalities inflicted during the entirety of Israel’s 34-day ground offensive against Hezbollah in 2006.

How many of the dead were Hezbollah fighters has not been divulged, but there were undoubtedly civilian casualties too.

Firass Abiad, Lebanon’s health minister, told reporters: “The overwhelming majority of those who fell during the attacks were… unarmed people in their homes.”

For Israel, Operation Northern Arrows is a response to months of rocket attacks by Hezbollah that have forced 60,000 residents in northern Israel to abandon their homes.

But the attacks have only increased the displacement crisis on the other side of the border, where 100,000 Lebanese civilians had already fled even before this week’s escalation.

After more than half a day stuck in traffic on the main highway into Beirut, thousands of bewildered and exhausted families arrived in the capital in search of somewhere to sleep.

The fortunate found places with their relatives or in hotels. Those less so crammed into makeshift shelters, with Lebanese officials saying that at least 27,000 people had been given accommodation in 252 schools across the country.

At the Zahia Kaddoura School, in Beirut’s Hamra district, Hezbollah officials piled mattresses onto classroom floors and shouted instructions to families spilling out of cars and arriving on the back of motorcycles.

Some carried small suitcases with them, while others clutched babies and, in the case of one young woman, a kitten.

All told similar stories of what they had left behind.

One family of four said 14 people had been killed by Israeli missile strikes in the village of Chaqra, near Bint Jbeil, a predominantly Shia border town that was the scene of some of the heaviest fighting during Israel’s war with Hezbollah in 2006.

Jaffar, who fled with his wife, 13-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter, said two shells struck the village, home to roughly 6,000 people, on Monday morning. One largely destroyed an empty mosque, he said, while the second flattened a house in the village, killing nine members of the same family.

A further five people were killed in strikes on the outskirts to the village, which is famed for its ruined crusader castle.

Despite the attacks, Jaffar initially decided to remain at home despite the dangers, but gradually he became aware that almost everyone in the village was leaving and that it would be foolhardy to stay.

“We had to drive cross country because the rubble from the house that was destroyed had spilled across the main road in the village making it impassable,” he said. “As we left five ambulances entered the village to try to help the wounded.”

Like many Shia Muslims, Jaffar declined to give his full identity because he had not been authorised to speak to journalists by Hezbollah.

Israeli warnings delivered by text message and voice recording had earlier urged people to leave southern Lebanon, saying that Hezbollah was using residential houses in the region to hide its vast arsenal, estimated to consist of 150,000 rockets, missiles and other munitions.

But families who have fled repeatedly insist that there is no Hezbollah presence in their villages and that Israeli forces have struck them anyway.

Older members of a family who fled Jarjouh, a village to the north of Chaqra, recalled what it was like to live in southern Lebanon when it was under Israeli occupation before 2000 and claimed that territorial expansionism was the real reason for the offensive.

“This is not about Hezbollah,” one woman said. “Israel wants to conquer our land for its settlers.”

She said that a house in the village owned by Christians was destroyed in yesterday’s air strikes but that it was empty as the family had left.

Israeli officials say that Hezbollah frequently uses abandoned houses to hide or launch their rockets, although the woman insisted this was not the case in Jarjouh.

With global concern mounting, Joe Biden, the US president, urged both sides to find a diplomatic resolution to the crisis, saying it was “the only path to lasting security and to allow the residents of both countries to return to their homes”.

“Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest,” he told the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

For many of those newly dispossessed of their homes, however, it felt like war was already with them – and that talk of a negotiated solution was little more than fantasy.

“The United States and the international community are just going through the motions,” said one man, cradling a bandaged arm injured after an Israeli bomb shattered the glass in his house in the village of Kfar Roummane.

“They are not trying to stop Israel’s war. They are just enabling it.”