Nursing staff at the Dar Al Amal University Hospital in Baalbek heard bombs near the facility at around 3:30 pm on Wednesday, October 30. Elie Moubarak, the hospital's medical director, went around the floors of the hospital, the windows still "intact," to "reassure patients and staff," he told Le Monde via WhatsApp.
The heavy strikes that hit the Baalbek region on Wednesday left at least 19 people dead, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health. The strikes came just hours after an evacuation order issued by the Israeli army, which caused shock and panic as it affected the entire northeastern Lebanese town with a population of around 80,000 people, as well as several neighboring localities. This part of the Beqaa Valley, with its Shiite majority, is one of Hezbollah's strongholds, having been the region where the pro-Iranian armed movement went underground in the 1980s at the height of the Lebanon war (1975-1990). The region is also a transit point for the Shiite party's weapons from Syria.
The evacuation order threw tens of thousands of residents onto the roads under the sound of drones. Ali (he wished to remain anonymous), a shopkeeper from Baalbek, a thousand-year-old city that is home to one of the world's most beautiful Roman sites, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was informed of the evacuation order by a friend late in the morning. Since the start of the vast Israeli offensive on Lebanon on September 23, such orders have been very rare in the Beqaa Valley, as the region is usually bombarded without warning.
In the southern part of the country and the southern suburbs of Beirut, two other Hezbollah strongholds in the Israeli army's line of fire, orders to evacuate the remaining population are commonplace, but this does not prevent strikes without warning.
Because "the whole town was affected by the evacuation," Ali left his home with a few clothes and some money. Accompanied by a friend, he set off in the direction of Zahlé, a Christian town some 40 kilometers southwest of Baalbek. "On the road, there was a huge crowd. You could see the fear on people's faces. We saw three or four accidents, because people were driving at full speed, before calming down once they got away from Baalbek," he told Le Monde. He has taken refuge in a friend's apartment in Zahlé with another family but intends to return as soon as possible. A post on X on Wednesday evening from the Israeli army's Arabic-speaking spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, suggested that the evacuation order had not been lifted.
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