Photos – Inside one of the classrooms in a vocational school that was hastily turned into a center to shelter the displaced, with nothing but a number of mattresses and blankets, Mustafa Al-Sayyid stands between his wife and children, complaining about the bad conditions they are living in after they were forced to flee from the village of Beit Lev, close to the Lebanese border with Israel.
Al-Sayed recounts his suffering to Al Jazeera Net, saying, “Due to the Israeli bombing on homes and agricultural lands, which caused the death of a number of civilians, we left our homes and were only able to take some clothes.”
He added, “Because we do not have money, we resorted to the shelter center affiliated with the Union of Municipalities, which provides us with food and some cleaning supplies, but we have many shortcomings. We want a washing machine to wash the clothes that we have been wearing for days, and we do not know how long we will remain here before we can return to our home.” “Our homes.”
He points out that many families share a common bathroom, and that water and electricity are often cut off, which increases people’s suffering.
In the city of Tyre, in southern Lebanon, there are more than 1,500 families who were displaced from villages on the border strip to escape the Israeli bombing. They were distributed among a number of shelter centers in public and private schools prepared by the Disaster Management Unit of the Union of Municipalities of Tyre.
In conjunction with the Israeli war on Gaza since last October 7, the Lebanese border has witnessed an intermittent exchange of fire between the Israeli occupation army on the one hand, and Hezbollah and Palestinian factions on the other hand, which led to dozens of deaths and injuries on both sides.
The displaced hope that the war will end as soon as they can return to their homes (Al Jazeera)
Anticipation and anxiety
The situation is not much different with the octogenarian Hajj Musa Al-Mousa from the village of Al-Bustan, who was forced to flee with his grandchildren and some of his children, leaving his wife and two sons to take care of the sheep in the pastures and agricultural lands near the village, which are subject to continuous Israeli bombing.
He told Al Jazeera Net, “I was displaced with my children for fear of our lives, but because we are Bedouin sheep herders, I had to leave my wife and two sons to take care of the livestock in the pastures located between the areas of Al-Dhahira and Alma Al-Shaab, and we live in constant anxiety for fear of them being exposed to any harm, God forbid.”
He added, “Despite everything, thank God, we are still safe. We communicate daily by phone with our children and relatives who preferred to remain at the border, and we reassure them of their safety.”
His son Khaled takes the reins of the conversation, saying, “From the second day of the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle, clashes began along the border, and the Israeli occupation army began bombing the border areas with phosphorous bombs, so we were forced to leave our homes and head to Tire in search of safety.”
Khaled confirms that many houses were burned or damaged due to the continuous Israeli bombing.
Despite everything that happened to him and his family, Khaled feels happy and proud of what the Palestinian resistance did in Gaza, which “humiliated the Israeli occupation in the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood.”
He adds: We know that when the Israeli occupation is exposed to pain or defeat, it retaliates by committing massacres and bombing defenseless civilians, but we say, May God grant victory to the people of Gaza, and we are with them in this battle.
Financial pressure
As the escalation continued, Tire district received more than 10,000 displaced people, which poses a major challenge to the disaster management unit in the coastal city, which works around the clock to manage the continuous influx of displaced people.
Hassan Hamoud, Vice President of the Union of Municipalities of Tire District, acknowledges that the miserable economic situation the country is going through and the lack of ministries’ funds to support the displaced complicate the Disaster Unit’s efforts to provide adequate support to the displaced.
He added to Al Jazeera Net that since the second day of the war, the occupation forces began firing bullets and phosphorus bombs towards the border villages, forcing people to leave their homes and go to safer areas such as the city of Tyre.
He confirms that the Disaster Management Unit opened three shelter centers since the first day of the displacement movement, registered the displaced and assessed their special needs, and with the increase in the number of displaced people, we established a fourth center.
According to Hammoud, there are 800 displaced people in the shelter centers affiliated with the Union of Municipalities, and some of these displaced people are poor and day laborers in the field of grazing and agriculture, while the rest have moved to reside with their relatives in Tyre or Sidon, or have rented apartments to live in.
He points out that in the absence of government financial allocations, the Union of Municipalities resorted to charitable, international and humanitarian societies to provide the humanitarian needs of the displaced, most notably 3 daily meals from the kitchens of the Imam al-Sadr Foundation, drinking water and cleaning supplies.
Hammoud appealed to government agencies, charitable organizations, and international organizations to help provide the daily and humanitarian needs of these displaced people.
2023-11-05 14:38:57
#difficult #conditions #Lebanese #Tire #schools #embrace #hundreds #displaced #people #southern #villages
