Residents Flee As Israel Is Set To Conduct Air Strikes On Southern Lebanon

Families across southern Lebanon are scrambling their belongings together and fleeing the city for the north as fears of Israeli air attacks loom.

On Monday evening, the Lebanese health ministry said that 492 people had been killed and over 1,600 people injured during an Israeli bombardment.

Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) say it has carried out 1,100 strikes in the past 24 hours as they target Iran-backed Hezbollah.

Some residents of southern Lebanon said they received threatening text messages and voice recordings from the Israeli military warning them to depart areas they believe Hezbollah is stationed.

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The BBC reported that residents said the bombardments were intense, forcing them to flee or stay locked in as the heavy traffic meant they could not easily leave the city.

“I woke up at 6 a.m. to the sound of bombing. By noon it started to get really intense, and I saw a lot of strikes in my area,” Zahra Sawli, a student in the Lebanese southern town of Nabatieh, told the BBC.

“I heard a lot of glass shattering.”

However, Zahra and her family could not leave the city like others.

“Where are we supposed to go? A lot of people are still stuck on the streets. A lot of my friends are still stuck in traffic because a lot of people are trying to flee,” she disclosed.

A family of five who arrived in Beirut on a motorbike from a southern village told the BBC that they were heading to Tripoli in the north.

“What do you want us to say? We just had to flee,” the father of the family said.

World leaders are in the United States for the 79^th United Nations General Assembly, and the war between Israel vs. Hamas and Hezbollah is expected to be discussed by global powers as they seek solutions.