UN says needs safe locations to house Lebanon displaced

The International Organization for Migration’s regional director has criticised the “minimal” support provided so far for the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the Israeli aerial and ground offensive in Lebanon.

Speaking during his visit to Lebanon, Othman Belbeisi emphasized the urgent need to identify safe locations to accommodate displaced people, as many existing shelters are overwhelmed, he said, based on field assessments.

The Lebanese government has said that some 1.2 million people have been displaced by the conflict, of which Belbeisi said the IOM has been able to verify 690,000, a number that is expected to grow.

While hundreds of thousands have fled across the border into neighboring Syria, Belbeisi said so far the organization has not tracked a major surge in the number of people attempting to flee to other countries by sea, possibly because such journeys would involve a “very high risk with the current situation.”

More bombardments

Rescue workers searched through the rubble of a collapsed building in central Beirut on Friday morning, hours after two Israeli strikes hit the Lebanese capital, killing at least 22 people and wounding dozens.

The air raid was the deadliest attack on central Beirut in over a year of war, hitting two residential buildings in neighborhoods that have swelled with displaced people fleeing Israeli bombardment elsewhere in the country.

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Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television and Israeli media said the strikes aimed to kill Wafiq Safa, a top security official with the group.

Al-Manar said Safa was not in either building at the time. The Israeli military had no comment on the reports.

Thursday night’s strikes came as Israel escalated its campaign against Hezbollah with waves of heavy airstrikes across Lebanon and a ground invasion at the border, after a year of exchanges of fire between the two rivals.