Nearly 29,000 people flee southern Lebanon
Lebanon’s southern border has seen tit-for-tat exchanges between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Daily TribuneLebanon’s southern border has seen tit-for-tat exchanges between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Nearly 29,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon amid deadly exchanges between Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters and the Israeli army, a United Nations agency said Friday.
A total of 28,965 people have been displaced, mainly in the country's south, the International Organization for Migration said in an update, adding that the figure had risen by 37 percent since 23 October.
Some have found refuge with family members elsewhere in the country, while those who can afford it have been able to rent apartments on a short-term basis.
But with Lebanon in the grips of an economic crisis that has plunged most of the population into poverty, many are living in makeshift shelters in the south's larger towns.
Since Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip on 7 October, Lebanon's southern border has seen tit-for-tat exchanges between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah, a Hamas ally.
At least 58 people have been killed in the cross-border exchanges of fire, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also including at least four civilians, one of them Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah.
Soldiers and volunteers on Thursday were battling a blaze on Lebanon's southern border caused by Israeli bombing overnight, local officials said.
Mayor of the border village of Alma al-Shaab, Jean Ghafari, said fire broke out after Israeli bombing late Wednesday.
"The blaze reached the edges of the village after midnight" and is still burning, he told Agence France-Presse, adding that it "has come close to houses."
The municipality said some 70 percent of the village's population had fled due to Israeli attacks.
