By Abdelaziz Boumzar and Maya Gebeily
SIDON, Lebanon (Reuters) – Households from south Lebanon clogged the highways north on Monday, fleeing an increasing Israeli bombardment for an unsure future with kids crammed onto mother and father’ laps, suitcases tied to automobile roofs and darkish smoke rising behind them.
Numerous vehicles, vans and pick-up vehicles have been loaded with belongings and crammed with folks, generally a number of generations to a car, whereas different households had fled quick, taking solely the naked necessities as bombs rained down from above.
“When the strikes occurred within the morning on the homes I grabbed all of the essential papers and we bought out. Strikes throughout us. It was terrifying,” mentioned Abed Afou whose village of Yater was hit closely within the daybreak barrage.
Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group have been buying and selling fireplace throughout the border because the struggle in Gaza started final 12 months with an assault by Hezbollah’s ally Hamas, however Israel has quickly intensified its army marketing campaign over the previous week.
On Monday, because the bombardment escalated to embody extra elements of Lebanon, folks acquired pre-recorded phone calls on behalf of Israel’s army telling them to go away their properties for their very own security.
Afou, who had stayed in Yater because the begin of the preventing regardless of being solely about 5 km (3 miles) from the Israeli border, determined to go away as blasts began putting residential homes within the district, he mentioned.
“I had one hand on my son’s again telling him to not be afraid,” he mentioned. Afou’s household with three sons aged 6-13, and several other different family, have been now caught on the freeway as visitors crawled north.
They didn’t know the place they might keep, he mentioned, however simply wished to achieve Beirut.
‘WE WILL RETURN’
Because the visitors handed via Sidon lengthy queues shaped. A van crawled by, its again doorways hanging open and a household sitting inside, a lady in a crimson scarf by the door with one foot hanging out and a boy standing within the center, hanging onto a rail.
By the roadside a bunch from Lebanon’s safety forces, carrying blue denims and black gilets marked ‘Police’ stood with their weapons.
A person leaned throughout a lady within the passenger seat of a automobile to shout via the window: “We can be again. God prepared we can be again. Inform (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu that we are going to return.”
However one other man, who gave solely his first title Ahmed, mentioned solely God knew if his household might ever return house. He had pulled up by the roadside, his van crammed with greater than 10 folks, lots of them kids.
“Strikes. Warplanes. Destruction. Nobody is left there. Everybody has fled. We took our belongings and left,” he mentioned.
Lebanon’s well being ministry mentioned greater than 270 folks have been killed within the bombardment and an official mentioned it was the nation’s deadliest single day because the finish of the civil struggle in 1990.
Israel mentioned it had struck about 800 targets linked to Hezbollah and that buildings it hit contained weapons belonging to the group.
Some had witnessed the destruction up shut.
“The power and depth of the bombing are one thing we have not witnessed earlier than in all of the earlier wars,” mentioned Abu Hassan Kahoul, on his option to Beirut together with his household after two buildings have been levelled close to the condominium block the place he lives.
“Young children do not know what is occurring however there’s concern of their eyes,” he added.
Even in Beirut there was rising alarm, and oldsters rushed to tug their kids from faculties as Israel warned of extra strikes. “The state of affairs is just not reassuring,” mentioned a person known as Issa, coming to select up a younger scholar.