BEIRUT, March 6 (Reuters) – About 100,000 people have fled to shelters in Lebanon, and the number of displaced is expected to rise rapidly after unprecedented Israeli alerts 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, Israeli forces ordered on Thursday that residents leave the southern suburbs of Beirut, including areas controlled by the Iran-backed group, as well as parts of the eastern Bekaa Valley, after ordering people to leave a southern Lebanon corridor 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, of the displacement orders and the response, and the panic also, that all of this has created,” said Imran Riza, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, to Reuters.
“At the moment, there are about 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 congestion caused by the Israeli displacement orders, Riza said: “People were moving all around and did not know where to go. So, yes, I think we will see the number of people rise rapidly.”
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, the majority will probably not be in shelters,” he said.
(Reporting by Tom Perry)
