On the deck of the empty swimming pool at the Montana, a disused hotel in Merouaniyeh, southern Lebanon, transformed into a shelter for the displaced, Mahmoud Reslan relived the days of the autumn 2024 war: "We were cut off. NGOs didn't dare come to bring us aid. The children played, even as bombs thundered in the south."

On September 23, 2024, the Israeli army launched a large-scale offensive in Lebanon, with the stated aim of neutralizing Hezbollah. On the first day alone, the strikes killed at least 558 people, including 50 children, according to Lebanese authorities, and triggered a mass exodus from the south. Eight days later, the air raids were followed by ground operations.

By that time, Reslan had already fled his village of Odaisseh, located on the border with Israel, several months earlier. He had been working in construction there. He left with his wife and two youngest children, as a low-intensity conflict was already underway in the south between Israel and Hezbollah, after Hezbollah's strikes in the wake of Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack.

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