Fears are growing that “no one is safe” in Lebanon after Israel’s airstrike in central Beirut, according to the executive director of a humanitarian nongovernmental organization working to support families displaced by the bombing campaign.
Humanitarian workers were “shocked” by the strike in Beirut’s Cola district, Jihan Kaisi, the Executive Director of the Union of Relief and Development Associations, or URDA, told NBC News.
“This Cola area is crowded with families, with displaced families, who came to this area thinking it’s safe,” she said. “It’s a very crowded area.” And the strike targeting the area, just a couple of miles from downtown Beirut and the city’s Zaitunay Bay, she said, showed there was “no safe place guaranteed in Lebanon.”
She added that a deadly strike in the Sidon or Saida area in southern Lebanon on Sunday, had also heightened fears in that part of the country.
Thousands of families have been sheltering there under the belief that the heavily populated area would be safe and now they don’t know where else to go, she said.
Some families have been forced to sleep on the streets, in playgrounds and in parking lots after makeshift shelters set up in schools became too overcrowded, she added.
“It’s getting cold at night,” she said. “Imagine, children without any blanket at night. Imagine what is happening… what they will go through.”
She said many people had expressed fears that Lebanon could soon become like Gaza. “There’s talk that Lebanon might face the same situation,” she said. “So, yes they are talking about that. Families are scared.”
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