Zahraa Cheikhouna only had one wish: "To find a permanent home, where we can feel a minimum of safety." As Israeli surveillance drones crackled in the sky, on Tuesday, October 1, this 26-year-old woman recounted the night she had just spent with her husband and their two young children, in the tent they managed to find: "I didn't sleep. We heard the sound of bangs in the distance, on the southern outskirts [of Beirut]. The children were frightened. Then came the rain. What are we going to do if the rainy season starts?"

On edge, like the whole country, she pointed at a foreign bomber – Lebanon has none – that had begun its descent towards the airport, shuddering: "What's that? Is it going to bomb us?" Her husband hadn't slept a wink either: "He keeps watch every night, for fear of thugs approaching." A gust of wind lifted a section of the small tent, set on a sidewalk in central Beirut, between a bushy field and the seafront adjacent to Zaitunay Bay, a yacht marina lined with restaurants that were now closed, and whose entrances had been padlocked to prevent the displaced from gaining access.

Sheltered in schools

Cheikhouna fled with her family, "four of us on a scooter," from the Laylaki district, in the southern suburbs of the capital, on Friday night, after the massive Israeli bombardments that killed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader. These attacks, along with the evacuation orders that followed and the heavy night-time strikes, drove many inhabitants of the vast Shiite outskirts, Hezbollah's stronghold, into exodus. Several hundred thousand people usually live there.

Other families set up camp under tents or makeshift tarpaulins on the same sidewalk. Unperturbed Beirut residents jogged past. Shortly before, volunteers distributed some food to the displaced. "We've called schools [opened as shelters for the displaced] to get places, but they're full. We can't afford to rent accommodation," explained Cheikhouna. They didn't take any belongings with them and can't go back to get anything: "The street that leads to our house is closed, filled with rubble." Heavy Israeli shelling of the southern suburbs was heard again on Tuesday night.

In this country of 5.5 million inhabitants, the Israel offensive launched on September 23 with the aim of bringing Hezbollah to its knees has forced around a million people out onto the roads, according to the Lebanese authorities – a figure confirmed by the UN. These people left in a state of chaos and urgency from the south and east of the country, as well as from the southern suburbs of the capital, which are predominantly Shiite regions.

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