In east Lebanon, Israeli strikes displace thousands

AFP | Deir Al-Ahmar, Lebanon                                                      

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In the Christian town of Deir al-Ahmar, Hassan Noun has pitched his tent in a church courtyard after fleeing Israeli air strikes in the eastern Lebanese region of Baalbek.

“We need shelter -- soon there will be snow and rain. Where will these children find refuge?” said the grey-bearded father of five.

Uprooted from Baalbek, he is one of around 30,000 people seeking safety in and around Deir al-Ahmar, one of the Christian towns so far spared from the Israeli bombing of Hezbollah strongholds, which are predominantly in traditionally Shiite Muslim areas.

“We gather in front of churches and schools, which no longer have the capacity to accommodate us,” Noun said, referring to schools now serving as shelters. Behind him on an old church bench, his family placed their teapot and kitchen utensils. A plastic mat was spread on the stone floor.

Everywhere, the thin foam mattresses used by the displaced were set aside, some propped up against the door of the church perched atop a hill overlooking Bekaa Valley farms. Towels and sweatshirts dried alongside other laundry, draped over a wall or hung from ropes strung between the church columns.

Inside a minibus, the few possessions of a family were piled up on worn leather seats -- more mattresses, water bottles and backpacks stuffed with belongings. ‘No heating’ Fatima, 17, fled her village of Chaath “because of the bombardments”. At school in Bechouat, near Deir al-Ahmar, her family camps under an improvised tent -- several desks pushed together and topped with blankets for a semblance of privacy.

“There’s no heating, we don’t have warm clothes,” said the teen, her face framed by a black headscarf. “We are losing our school year. We can’t study because of the war.” Randa Amhaz expressed gratitude to the school for opening its doors, but she also had her concerns.

“Children need warm clothes, and the elderly need medicine,” she said. Since September 23, Israeli strikes have killed more than 1,900 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally based on figures from Lebanon’s health ministry.

On Friday alone, 52 people were killed in Israeli strikes on the Baalbek-Hermel region of eastern Lebanon, the ministry said.

More than 78,000 people have been displaced from their homes in the district, according to the International Organization for Migration. Sleeping rough Deir al-Ahmar and the surrounding villages initially hosted 12,000 displaced, mainly settled “in homes, church annexes and some still on the roads”, said Rabih Saade, a member of the local emergency committee.

This week when Israel intensified its strikes on Baalbek, a “second wave of displaced people” arrived: 20,000 people, “the majority of whom slept in public places”, he said. He called on the state “to continue supporting us: we don’t know if the crisis will end in a week or two or in three or four months”.

In a schoolyard, women mostly dressed in black and children basked in the sun. The shouts of the youths echoed in the hallways. “We left our homes.

We don’t know where to go, we don’t know what to do,” said a woman who wanted to remain nameless, sitting on the floor by the bed of her elderly mother. Due to lack of space, she lay on a foam mattress in a passage between two doors.