Fear and tension in Lebanon amid deadly Israeli bombardments

In southern Lebanon, families gathered their belongings and drove north in cars, trucks and motorbikes as the Israeli army attacked targets they said were linked to the Lebanese Shiite armed group Hezbollah.

Some residents reported being warned by the Israeli military via text messages and voice recordings to leave areas near the positions of the Iran-backed group.

Zahra Sawli, a student from the southern town of Nabatieh, told the BBC’s Newshour programme that the bombardment had been intense.

“I woke up at 6am to the sound of bombing. By noon it was really intense and I saw a lot of attacks in my area.”

“I heard a lot of glass shattering.”

Unlike many, she and the people she was with did not leave the house. They did not dare, she said.

“Where do we go? There are still a lot of people stuck on the streets. A lot of my friends are still stuck in traffic because there are a lot of people trying to escape,” she said.

By mid-day, roads into Beirut were gridlocked with traffic as vehicles heading to the capital drove on both sides of a six-lane coastal road.

Other images showed people walking along the beach in the southern city of Tyre as smoke rose from airstrikes inland.

The BBC spoke to a family of five who arrived in Beirut on one motorbike.

From a village in the south they went to Tripoli in the north. They were exhausted.

“What do you want us to say? We just had to run,” the father said.

On Monday evening, Lebanon’s Health Ministry reported that 492 people had been killed and more than 1,600 wounded in the bombardment. It said at least 35 children were among the dead. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had carried out 1,100 strikes in the past 24 hours.

This included an airstrike in southern Beirut, which the IDF said targeted a senior Hezbollah commander.

There was widespread unrest in Beirut too. As people from the south arrived in the capital in cars with suitcases on the roof, some of the city’s residents also left.

Israel has warned people to leave areas where it believes Hezbollah is storing weapons. But it has also sent written warnings to people in Beirut neighborhoods not considered Hezbollah strongholds, including Hamra, an area home to government ministries, banks and universities.

Parents rushed to pick up their children from school after being warned again to leave the area.

A father, Issa, picked up his son from school and told Reuters news agency: “(We are here) because of the phone calls.

“They are calling everyone and threatening people over the phone. So we are here to pick up my son from school. The situation is not reassuring,” he said.

Mohammed, a Palestinian man who was on the road with his wife, spoke to the BBC as he left Beirut.

When asked if he would stay in the capital, he said: “There is no safety anywhere in Lebanon, Israel says they are going to bomb everywhere. Now they are threatening this neighborhood, so where are we going to go?”

“It’s scary, I don’t know what to do – work, go home, no idea what to do.”

Meanwhile, as a BBC crew set up on one side of the road, a taxi driver called out to ask if they knew of a fuel crisis unfolding. “There are too many people coming to Beirut,” he said.

Schools have been hastily converted into shelters for the streams of evacuees coming from the south. On government orders, schools in Beirut and Tripoli and eastern Lebanon have been converted into shelters.

The BBC was present on Monday at a classroom at a public school in Bir Hasan, west Beirut, which was being prepared for people from the Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah stronghold in northeastern Lebanon that Israel says is also being targeted.

According to the workers, the classrooms were full of mattresses, but by the end of the day they would be completely occupied.

Meanwhile, Lebanese hospitals were also ordered on Monday to cancel all non-elective surgeries as doctors prepared for a wave of casualties and injuries.

Despite the tense and uncertain atmosphere in Beirut, some people were rebellious.

“If there is an all-out war, we as Lebanese must stand together, regardless of our political affiliations, because in the end our country will be bombed anyway,” one man told the BBC.

Others simply resigned themselves to the violence.

“If they want war, what can we do? It’s been imposed on us. We can’t do anything,” shop owner Mohammed Sibai told Reuters.

Mohammed, a 57-year-old man from Dahieyh, a southern suburb of Beirut – Hezbollah’s main power base in the capital – told the BBC he has “survived all the wars since 1975” so “for me it’s normal”.

“I’m not leaving, I’m staying in my house,” he said.