BEIRUT, March 6 (Reuters) – About 100,000 people have fled to shelters in Lebanon and the number of displaced people is expected to rise quickly following ‘unprecedented’ Israeli warnings ordering people to leave large parts of the country, a senior UN official said on Friday.
With the ongoing war between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Israeli military on Thursday ordered residents to leave Beirut’s southern suburbs, including areas controlled by the Iran-backed group, as well as parts of the eastern Bekaa Valley, after ordering people out of a swath of southern Lebanon on Wednesday.
‘What we’ve seen in the last few days is, I would say… unprecedented in terms of the scale here in Lebanon of the alerts, the displacement orders and the reaction, the panic as well, that all of this has created,’ Imran Riza, UN humanitarian coordinator in 🏽Lebanon, told Reuters.
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‘At the moment, there are around 100,000 people who are, as of this morning, in 477 collective shelters. There are about 57 shelters that still have some space, but basically capacity is being reached very, very quickly.
Highlighting the panic and traffic jam caused by Israeli displacement orders, Riza said: ‘People were moving everywhere and didn’t know where to go. So, yes, I think we will see an increase in the number of people quickly.
He noted that more than a million people were displaced in Lebanon during a war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2024, 75-80% of whom were not in shelters. “This time again, most will probably not be in shelters,” he said.
(Reporting by Tom Perry)
