Thousands of Lebanese displaced by Israeli bombings

PublishedNovember 2, 2024, 1.34pm

In the Christian village of Deir al-Ahmar, Hassan Noun pitched his tent under an awning in the courtyard of a church, after fleeing the Baalbeck region in eastern Lebanon, where the Israeli army intensified its bombings.

“We need a shelter, soon there will be snow and rain, where can these children shelter?” says the forty-year-old with a graying beard, father of five young children. Displaced from the region of Baalbeck, he is one of the 30,000 people taking refuge in Deir al-Ahmar and its surroundings, one of the Christian towns in the Bekaa Valley spared by the Israeli bombings which strike the localities daily.

“We find ourselves in front of churches and in front of schools, which no longer have the capacity to welcome us,” assures Mr. Noun, in reference to schools that have become accommodation centers. Behind him, on a worm-eaten church pew, the family has placed their teapot and kitchen utensils. A plastic mat is spread on the stone floor.

Fatima, 17, fled her village of Chaath “because of the bombings”. Near Deir al-Ahmar, in a school in Bechouat transformed into a dormitory, his family camps under an improvised “tent”. “There is no heating, we don’t have clothes that will keep us warm,” breathes the teenager. “We are losing our school year, we can no longer study because of the war,” she regrets.

Randa Amhaz candidly thanks the school which opened its doors, the municipality, and “Mr Joseph who welcomed us”. She also expresses pressing needs. “Children need warm clothes, and the elderly need medicine,” she says.

Since September 23, Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed more than 1,900 people, according to a count based on data from the Lebanese Ministry of Health. On Friday alone, bombings on several localities in the Baalbek-Hermel governorate killed 52 people.

And more than 78,000 people have been displaced from their homes in the Baalbeck district, according to statistics from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Deir al-Ahmar and the surrounding villages initially welcomed 12,000 displaced people, mainly settled “in houses, outbuildings of churches, and some still on the roads”, underlines Rabih Saadé, who is part of the emergency committee. local. This week, with the intensification of strikes on Baalbeck, a “second wave of displaced people” arrived: 20,000 people, “a majority of whom slept in public squares,” he said.

He appeals to the State “to be able to continue: we do not know if the crisis will end in a week or two, or in three or four months.”

In a schoolyard, women often all dressed in black and children enjoy the sun. The cries of the little ones echo through the corridors. Here too the laundry dries in the classroom windows or on old desks in the courtyard. “We left our homes, we don’t know where to go, we don’t know what to do,” says a woman who wished to remain anonymous, sitting on the floor with her handbag, at the bedside of her mother, an old lady. with a sad look and a leathery face.

Due to lack of space, she is lying on a foam mattress, in a passage between two doors.