Hundreds of fleeing families sleep on beaches and streets after Israel’s strikes shake Beirut

Families gather in Martyrs' square after fleeing the Israeli airstrikes in Beirut's southern suburbs, Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 29 September 2024
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Hundreds of fleeing families sleep on beaches and streets after Israel’s strikes shake Beirut

  • Lines of people trudged up to the mountains above the Lebanese capital, holding infants and a few belongings

BEIRUT: Smoke was still rising from Beirut’s southern suburbs Saturday morning, visible to many of the families who had fled their homes there the night before to escape Israel’s massive bombardment.
It had been a harrowing night — getting out amid earthshaking explosions, looking in vain for space in one of the overflowing schools-turned-shelters. By the morning, hundreds of families were sleeping in public squares, on beaches or in cars around Beirut.
Lines of people trudged up to the mountains above the Lebanese capital, holding infants and a few belongings.
Overnight, Israel unleashed a series of strikes on various parts of Dahiyeh, the predominantly Shiite collection of suburbs on Beirut’s southern edge where tens of thousands of residents live. The biggest blasts to hit Beirut in nearly a year of conflict killed the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, Friday.
The assault was part of a rapid escalation of Israeli strikes the past week that has killed more than 700 people in Lebanon. Israel has vowed to cripple Hezbollah and put an end to 11 months of its fire onto Israeli territory in what Nasrallah described as a “support front” for his ally Hamas in Gaza.
The newly displaced swell the numbers Beirut is absorbing
The people escaping Friday night’s mayhem joined tens of thousands who have fled to Beirut and other areas of southern Lebanon the past week to escape Israel’s bombardment.
For many residents of Dahiyeh, the forced evacuation was disconcertingly familiar.
Some were Lebanese who had lived through the bruising monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, when Israel leveled large parts of the Beirut suburbs. Others were Syrians who had taken refuge from the long civil war in their own country.
Fatima Chahine, a Syrian refugee, slept on the Ramlet Al-Bayda public beach in Beirut with her family and hundreds of strangers. The night before she, her husband and their two children had piled onto a motorcycle and raced out of Dahiyeh, with “bombing below us and strikes above us.”
“Thank God, no one was wounded,” she said.
The government has opened up schools in Beirut to take in the displaced. But Syrians have reported that some sites turn them away to reserve the few spaces for Lebanese. Chahine said her family came directly to the beach.
“We only want a place where our children won’t be afraid,” she said. “We fled from the war in Syria in 2011 because of the children and we came here, and now the same thing is happening again.”
Since Monday, some 22,331 Syrians in Lebanon have crossed back into Syria, along with 22,117 Lebanese, according to Lebanese authorities.
Chahine said returning is not an option for her family; she is from an opposition area and so could face reprisals from the Syrian government.
At the beach, the displaced were spread out over the sidewalk or in cars parked by the curb. Others were camped out in beach pagodas or on blankets in the sand.
“We spent more than three hours going in circles between schools and shelters and we didn’t find one with room,” said Talal Ahmad Jassaf, a Lebanese man who slept on the beach with his family. He said he is considering going to the relative safety of Syria. But he worries about airstrikes on the road between Beirut and Damascus.
Some people are left without aid

The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, said this week’s escalation had more than doubled the number of people displaced by the conflict in Lebanon. There are now over 211,000 people displaced, including some of the humanitarian workers who should be responding to the crisis, it said. Around 85,000 of them are sleeping in shelters, it said.
“Humanitarian capacities to respond have been severely overstretched,” it added.
Displaced people sleeping outside in Beirut largely told The Associated Press that they had not received assistance from any humanitarian organization.
A stadium in the seaside neighborhood of Manara owned by the Nejmeh soccer club opened its doors to the displaced, who spent the night sleeping on bleachers.
Among them was Mariam Darwish, her husband and five children. She fled her home in Dahiyeh earlier in the week when the first Israeli strikes hit there.
Darwish said they had received water from the soccer club but that no organization had brought food, blankets or other supplies.
“People are helping each other out, family and friends are getting things for each other,” she said.
She and her husband had fled during the 2006 war, when their oldest son was a baby, and returned to their home when the war ended. They hope their house will still be standing to return to this time, she said.
“We’re worried about our children and the schools, that they’ll lose out on their future,” she said. “What can we do? We can only say thank God.”
She added, “May the resistance be victorious.” At the time of the interview, Hezbollah had not yet confirmed Nasrallah’s death.
Despite their battered-down circumstances, others also struck a defiant tone.
Jamal Hussein fled Dahiyeh at 3 a.m. with his extended family amid ongoing bombing and spent the night sleeping on the seaside promenade in Beirut’s upscale Ain Mreisseh district.
“Of course we aren’t afraid for ourselves, but we have children,” he said. “We are steadfast and ready to sacrifice more than this.”


Thousands protest in Iraq against the Iran-Israel war

Updated 20 June 2025
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Thousands protest in Iraq against the Iran-Israel war

  • “No to Israel! No to America!” chanted demonstrators gathered after Friday prayers in the Sadr City district of Baghdad
  • In Iraq's southern city of Basra, around 2,000 people demonstrated after the prayers

BAGHDAD: Thousands of supporters of powerful Iraqi cleric Moqtada Sadr rallied Friday in Baghdad and other cities against Israel’s war with Iran, AFP correspondents said.

“No to Israel! No to America!” chanted demonstrators gathered after Friday prayers in the Sadr City district of Baghdad, Moqtada Sadr’s stronghold in the capital, holding umbrellas to shield themselves from Iraq’s scorching summer sun.

“It is an unjust war... Israel has no right” to hit Iran, said protester Abu Hussein.

“Israel is not in it for the (Iranian) nuclear (program). What Israel and the Americans want is to dominate the Middle East,” added the 54-year-old taxi driver.

He said he hoped Iran would come out of the war victorious, and that Iraq should support its neighbor “with money, weapons and protests.”

In Iraq’s southern city of Basra, around 2,000 people demonstrated after the prayers, according to an AFP correspondent.

Cleric Qusai Assadi, 43, denounced Israel’s use of Iraqi airspace to bomb Iran. “It is a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty,” he said, warning against “a third world war against Islam.”

Echoing the views of Sadr, Assadi said that Iraq should not be dragged into the conflict.

In a statement earlier this week, Sadr condemned “the Zionist and American terrorism” and the “aggression against neighboring Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen,” referring to Israel’s military operations in those countries.

Sadr, who once led a militia fighting US-led forces after the 2003 invasion, retains a devoted following of millions among the country’s majority community of Shiite Muslims, and wields great influence over Iraqi politics.

He has previously criticized Tehran-backed Iraqi armed factions, who have threatened US interests in the region if the United States were to join Israel in its war against Iran.

On Friday, Israel launched a surprise attack targeting Iran’s military and nuclear sites and killing top commanders and scientists, saying it was acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, an ambition Tehran denies having.

The assault has prompted Iran to retaliate with barrages of missiles aimed at Israel, with residential areas in both countries suffering.

Iraq is both a significant ally of Iran and a strategic partner of Israel’s key supporter, the United States, and has for years negotiated a delicate balancing act between the two foes.

It has only recently regained a semblance of stability after decades of devastating conflicts and turmoil.


Fearful of Iranian missiles, many sleep in Israel’s underground train stations

Updated 20 June 2025
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Fearful of Iranian missiles, many sleep in Israel’s underground train stations

  • “We’re not sleeping because of the anxiety and because of the sirens that are happening during the nights,” said Shraibmen
  • Melech said the scene, with hundreds of people in their pajamas in the train station, reminded her of her grandfather’s stories from World War II

RAMAT GAN, Israel: Aziza Melech felt her body relax for the first time in days when she settled onto her inflatable mattress in an underground station of Israel’s light rail system on a recent evening.

For the next few hours, at least, the 34-year-old event planner wouldn’t need to run every time a siren warning of Iranian missiles sounded.

Since the war began a week ago with Israel’s airstrikes on Iran, families with young kids, foreign workers, and young professionals have brought mattresses and sleeping bags, snacks and pets into the stations each evening.

Repeatedly running for shelter

On Wednesday night, in a station that straddles Tel Aviv and neighboring Ramat Gan, parents settled in their kids with stuffed animals, while young people fired up tablets loaded with movies.

Many walked in carrying boxes of pizza. Workers set out snacks and coffee.

It was Melech’s first night sleeping in the brightly lit train station, and she was joined by her friend Sonia Shraibmen.

“We’re not sleeping because of the anxiety and because of the sirens that are happening during the nights,” said Shraibmen. “It’s very scary to run every time to the shelter.”

That morning, Shraibmen fell on the street while rushing to a nearby shelter, and decided to move somewhere where she wouldn’t have to get up and run each time her phone blared.

Melech said the scene, with hundreds of people in their pajamas in the train station, reminded her of her grandfather’s stories from World War II. “Now, we’ll be able to tell our grandkids about this,” she said.

The war between Israel and Iran began on June 13, when Israel launched airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear and military sites as well as top generals and nuclear scientists.

More than 600 people, including over 200 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 2,000 wounded, according to a Washington-based Iranian human rights group. People in Tehran have also packed into metro stations as strikes boomed overhead.

Iran has retaliated by firing 450 missiles and more than 1,000 drones at Israel, according to Israeli army estimates. Those strikes have killed have killed 24 people and injured hundreds in Israel. Missiles have struck 40 different sites, including apartment buildings, offices and a hospital, according to authorities.

Footage of pancaked buildings or apartment towers with faces sheared off has forced some people to reconsider what they do when a siren blares.

The Tel Aviv light rail, which is not running because of the war, has several underground stations. In addition to the hundreds who sleep in them each night, thousands of others come only when there’s a siren, crowding into every part of the station not taken up by mattresses.

Those living older apartments lack shelter

Around half of the nighttime residents at the train station are foreign workers, who often live in older apartment buildings that are often not equipped with adequate shelters.

While new buildings in Israel are required to have reinforced safe rooms meant to withstand rockets, Iran is firing much stronger ballistic missiles. And shelter access is severely lacking in poorer neighborhoods and towns, especially in Arab areas.

Babu Chinabery, a home health aide from India, said he went to the station ”because we are very scared about the missiles because they’re so strong.”

Chinabery, 48, has been in Israel for 10 years, so he is no stranger to the sirens. But the past week has been something different. “It’s very difficult, that’s why we’re coming to sleep here,” he said.

The light rail stations aren’t the only places people have sought shelter.

Around 400 people also sleep in an underground parking garage at one of the city’s biggest malls each night, according to organizers. Mutual aid groups set up more than 100 tents, each one in a parking space, providing a bit more privacy for people who wanted to sleep in a safe area.

Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station — a half-abandoned cement behemoth — also opened its underground atomic shelter to the public for the first time in years.

While likely one of the safest places in Israel during a missile attack, the creepily deserted rat- and cockroach-infested shelter, filled with standing water from leaky pipes, attracted only a handful of curious onlookers during the day and no residents at night.

Not taking ‘unnecessary risks’

Roi Asraf, 45, has been sleeping at the train station in Ramat Gan for the past few nights with his wife and 3-year-old daughter, even though they have a safe room at home.

“I don’t like to take unnecessary risks,” he said.

They now have the routine down: They give their daughter a bath at home, get everyone in their pajamas, and walk to the train station by 7 p.m. Local volunteers have run a nightly show for kids to help settle them before sleep.

“I hope (the conflict) will be short and quick,” said Asraf, after his daughter, Ariel, bounded off with her mom to catch the show. Despite the difficulties, he supports Israel’s attack on Iran.

“If I have to sleep a week of my life in a train station for everything to be safer, I’m willing to do it,” he said.


Libya objects to Greek tender for hydrocarbon exploration off Crete

Updated 20 June 2025
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Libya objects to Greek tender for hydrocarbon exploration off Crete

  • Greece opposed the agreement, saying it had no legal basis
  • Last month Athens invited bidders for hydrocarbon exploration in two blocks south of Crete

TRIPOLI: Libya’s internationally recognized government of national unity has objected to Greece’s approval of an international tender for hydrocarbon exploration off the island of Crete, saying some of the blocks infringed upon its own maritime zones.

The two countries have been trying to mend relations strained by an accord signed in 2019 between the Libyan government and Greece’s regional rival Turkiye, which mapped out a sea area between them close to the Greek island.

Greece opposed the agreement, saying it had no legal basis as it sought to create an exclusive economic zone from Turkiye’s southern Mediterranean shore to Libya’s northeast coast, ignoring the presence of Crete.

Last month Athens invited bidders for hydrocarbon exploration in two blocks south of Crete following an expression of interest by US major Chevron.

Libya’s Tripoli-based foreign ministry said in a statement late on Thursday that some of the tendered sea blocks off Crete fell within disputed zones and were “a clear violation of Libya’s sovereign rights.”

The ministry objected “to any exploration or drilling activities in these areas without a prior legal understanding that respects the rules of international law,” it said, calling on Greek authorities to prioritize dialogue and negotiation.

Responding to questions at the Greek parliament, Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis said Greece was willing to discuss with Libya “the delimitation of maritime zones within the framework of international law.”

Gerapetritis is expected to visit Libya in the coming weeks, an official with the Greek foreign ministry told Reuters on condition of anonymity.


Israeli defense minister warns Hezbollah against joining conflict with Iran

Updated 20 June 2025
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Israeli defense minister warns Hezbollah against joining conflict with Iran

  • Hezbollah has made no explicit pledge to join the fighting

JERUSALEM: Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Lebanon’s Hezbollah to exercise caution on Friday, saying Israel’s patience with “terrorists” who threaten it had worn thin.

The head of Iran-backed Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, said on Thursday that the Lebanese group would act as it saw fit in the face of what he called “brutal Israeli-American aggression” against Iran.

In other statements, the group has made no explicit pledge to join the fighting and a Hezbollah official told Reuters last week that the group did not intend to initiate attacks against Israel.


Gaza rescuers say 43 killed by Israeli forces

Updated 20 June 2025
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Gaza rescuers say 43 killed by Israeli forces

  • Civil defense official says 26 people killed while gathered near aid distribution center

GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli forces killed at least 43 people on Friday, including 26 who had gathered near an aid distribution center, the latest in a string of deadly incidents targeting aid seekers in the Palestinian territory.
“Forty-three martyrs have fallen as a result of the ongoing Israeli bombardment on the Gaza Strip since dawn today, 26 of whom were waiting for humanitarian aid,” Mohammad Al-Mughayyir, director of medical supply at the civil defense agency in Gaza, told AFP.