“STARTING FROM ZERO”
Among those taking refuge in Beirut’s Camille Chamoun Sports City Stadium, which has been turned into a shelter, was Fatima Shehadeh, 35, a mother of four who fled the southern suburbs last week.
“I was pushing my baby in a stroller. We left on foot at 2am and spent the night outside” before coming to the shelter, she said.
She expressed worry about the impact of Israeli raids on her children, one of whom hid inside their tent a day earlier in fear.
“He didn’t come out because of the strikes. They were really close,” she said.
Dozens of family-sized tents have been set up inside the stadium, with families sleeping inside on thin mattresses on the concrete floor.
Beirut mayor Ibrahim Zeidan said the site could shelter more than 3,000 people.
Malak Jaber, 35, a mother of three from south Lebanon’s Nabatiyeh, said: “We spent two or three days living under a bridge, until they opened up this place.”
“My home was bombed yesterday,” she said. “If I want to go back … we’ll be starting from zero.”
Meanwhile, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and his Syrian counterpart Ahmed al-Sharaa agreed on the need to control their shared border, a Lebanese presidency statement said, after Syria accused Hezbollah of firing artillery shells into its territory overnight.
A day earlier, Aoun accused Hezbollah of working to “collapse” the state and expressed Beirut’s readiness for “direct negotiations” with Israel, while the head of the Iran-backed group’s parliamentary bloc Mohamed Raad vowed that his group would “defend our existence whatever the cost”.
Also on Tuesday, the last residents of the Christian village of Alma al-Shaab near the Israeli border fled, a UN source and an AFP correspondent said, after locals had for days defied an Israeli order to leave.