BEIRUT — Around the concrete courtyard of Ahliah School in the center of Lebanon’s capital, families perch on plastic chairs, sharing news of what houses they’ve heard have been destroyed in their villages near the southern border with Israel.
Many arrived Tuesday, fleeing south Lebanon amid what Lebanese authorities have called the largest displacement of its citizens in decades. More than 90,000 people fled their homes in intense Israeli attacks that killed almost 600 people in just two days this week, according to the United Nations' humanitarian coordination office.
The attacks that Israeli said were aimed at Hezbollah fighters and installations were an intensification of nearly a year of Israel and the militant Lebanese group trading rocket, missile and drone strikes across the Israeli-Lebanese border since the start of the Gaza war last October.
Many Lebanese fleeing the south took refuge with relatives in Beirut and other places, or searched for apartments to rent. But according to the U.N., about 40,000 of them sought shelter in more than 200 schools, which the Lebanese government asked to accommodate displaced people.
Outside the metal gates of the century-old Ahliah School cars full of exhausted-looking passengers pulled up on Tuesday. An aid official waved them on to other schools serving as temporary shelters. With more than 600 arriving in 24 hours, there was no room left.
It was supposed to be the first day of classes at the K-12 private school. Instead, Ahliah had to clear out desks, piling them up in the hallways, and make room for families to move in.
Children’s laundry hung from some of the classroom windows to dry. But most of the families arrived with nothing at all — only the clothes they were wearing.
One couple sat scrolling through social media videos to try to see whether their home was still standing. For security reasons, they asked to be identified as parents of their eldest son Ali, using the names Um Ali and Abu Ali, which mean Ali’s mother and father, respectively.
Um Ali says she was told that 18 houses in the neighborhood in a southern Lebanese village had been destroyed.
Their 12-year-old daughter was so traumatized by the airstrikes and their escape that she has barely spoken, Um Ali says.
“The airstrikes were right next to our cars and the children were screaming and crying,” she says. With her husband’s arm bandaged and in a cast after being hit by shrapnel a month ago from an Israeli airstrike, the mother bundled 10 family members into a car and drove south on Monday.
She says as they drove away there was blood “all over the street. You’d see a child lying in front of you bleeding and you can’t do anything to help.”
There were so many people fleeing south Lebanon on Monday, Lebanese soldiers turned the divided highway into a single route north. A 50-mile drive which normally would have taken an hour stretched in seven or eight hours, as panicked families crammed into any vehicle they could find.
Um Ali says in addition to not talking, her daughter has been unable to sleep and her heart races. Standing behind her mother, the girl says she’s OK, but then buries her face in her mother’s shoulder and starts to cry.
Her father says it is understandable that fighters would suffer in a war. But the effect on children is a different matter.
“Suddenly someone comes and makes your kids live in a state of fear, blood and destruction,” says her mother. “Nobody accepts living like that — to be humiliated and see their lives torn apart.”
“Would Americans accept that for their children?” the father, Abu Ali, asks.
It was too soon for the sense of loss that follows displacement to kick in. Abu Ali, a construction worker, and his wife refer to life in their border village in the present tense.
“We have a normal life,” he says. “My wife is at home, my kids are in school, and we have a nice house in the south with fresh air.”
“I grow everything and raise a few sheep,” adds Um Ali, her face for a moment radiant with the memory of life in the countryside. “We live a happy and beautiful life.”
The Israeli military says it is targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah, designated by the U.S. and other countries as a terrorist group, and its weapons and rocket launchers in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa region to the northeast. Israel has hit targets north of Beirut and in Beirut’s southern suburbs as well. The strikes have also killed and injured civilians, including hundreds of children.
Hezbollah began attacks last October to support Hamas in its fight against Israel in Gaza. Despite intense efforts by the United States and France to broker a cease-fire between Lebanon and Israel, Hezbollah has made clear that it will stop only when the fighting in Gaza stops.
The militant group is still reeling from unprecedented attacks recently, including explosions of thousands of its pagers and walkie-talkies last week that killed dozens of people, including children, and injured more than 3,500 others, according to Lebanese health officials. Israel is widely believed to be responsible for having detonated the devices, but the Israeli government has not confirmed any involvement.
Behind the school, a few boys kick around a blue ball on a concrete soccer field. In the courtyard, two sisters from the border town of Nabitieh sit on a low wall. The younger is 18 — her nails recently manicured in a bright purple. Her sister, 20, has long dark hair that is carefully styled.
The younger one struggles to describe how terrifying it was experiencing the airstrikes and then scrambling to flee.
“It was so scary — not a little, a lot,” she says, adding they slept in their clothes when the strikes began during the night to be able to flee early the next morning.
“Every night the planes would pass by to scare us,” says her older sister. “There were sonic booms and strikes that were very close.”
Neither wants their name used out of fear for their security.
On the long terrifying drive to Beirut they say they recited the shahada — the Muslim prayer before death — over and over in case their car was hit.
By the time they reached the southern suburbs late on Monday, where they had planned to stay, Israeli aircraft were launching strikes there too, forcing them to seek shelter in the city center. Israel has repeatedly hit the mostly Shia suburb of Dahiya, targeting Hezbollah commanders but also killing civilians in the densely populated area.
The streets of the capital are packed with displaced families. And for those who can afford it, so are the hotels. At the reception desk of one, a man asked for five rooms — but only for a night until the family figure out their options.
Outside another downtown hotel, the cafe tables are full of families with plastic bags of snacks.
“We have been trying to find an apartment but everyone now wants so much money, or six months in advance,” says a woman, sitting with her sister at one table. Like most displaced people, they did not want to be identified because they said they were afraid they could be targeted by Israel.
The woman, a supermarket cashier, says she left so quickly she did not even have her identification with her.
“The missiles were falling like rain,” she says. She and her sister have lived through three wars with Israel.
But this one, she insists, has already been the worst.
Jane Arraf reported in Beirut. Willem Marx wrote from London.
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