Around 100,000 people have fled to shelters in Lebanon and the number of displaced people is expected to increase rapidly following “unprecedented” warnings from Israel, which ordered the population to leave large areas of the country, a senior UN official said on Friday (6).
With the Lebanese terrorist group ongoing, the Israeli army ordered residents to leave the southern suburbs of Beirut on Thursday (5), including areas controlled by the Iran-backed group, as well as parts of the Bekaa Valley in the east of the country, after ordering the evacuation of a vast area of southern Lebanon on Wednesday.
“What we have seen in the last few days is, I would say… unprecedented in terms of the scale here in Lebanon, the warnings, the displacement orders and the reaction, the panic as well, that all of this has generated,” Imran Riza, UN humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, told Reuters news agency.
“Right now, there are about 100,000 people who, as of this morning, are in about 477 group shelters. There are about 57 shelters that still have vacancies, but basically capacity is being reached very, very quickly,” he said.
Observing the panic and chaos caused by Israeli displacement orders, Riza said: “We had people moving all over the place, not knowing where to go. So, yes, I think we will see a rapid increase in that number,” he said.
He noted that more than a million people were during the war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2024, of which 75% to 80% were not in shelters. “This time again, most will probably not be in shelters,” he concluded.
