BEIRUT: The head of the UN refugee agency warned Sunday that civilians in Lebanon were caught in the crossfire as Israel’s intensified bombardment campaign forced many to flee while others were trapped under fire.
Israel has launched an intense bombing campaign against Hezbollah since September 23, killing more than 1,100 people and pushing upwards of a million people to flee their homes, officials said.
“You have a humanitarian challenge due to displacement, but also a humanitarian challenge, and I would say human rights challenges due to the impossibility of being displaced,” UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi told reporters in Beirut.
UN refugee agency says record 117mn people forcibly displaced in 2023
Ivo Friesen, the head of the UNCHR in Lebanon said “There are still 6,000 refugees known to us, Syrian refugees in the south who were not able to move due to insecurity, and they don’t know where to go, and now it’s too late”.
Many Syrians who were driven out of their homeland by 13 years of war are now heading back to escape Israeli bombardment in Lebanon.
“We estimate, and probably our estimate is conservative, that 220,000 have crossed the Lebanese-Syrian border,” Grandi said, adding that 70 percent were Syrians and the rest Lebanese.
On Friday, Lebanon said an Israeli air strike on the Syrian border cut off the main international road linking the two countries.
“The bombing of the road, which has de facto blocked many people from seeking safety in Syria, is another example” of the challenges that displaced people face, he said.
Grandi said he will travel to Damascus on Monday where he will meet officials “to impress on them that this is an important opportunity… to show, that” displaced Syrians’ “safety and their ability to go back to their homes… is respected,” he said.
Rights groups say that over the years, some Syrian refugees have faced persecution upon returning.
He said 1,000 schools-turned-shelters in Lebanon were “full” of displaced families, while others sought refuge with relatives or had to sleep in the open fleeing “air strikes that are impacting so many civilians and civilian infrastructure”.
He said UN humanitarian agencies had appealed for about $425 million “for three months only,” adding that “so far already 40 percent is funded” after just a few days.
In a statement issued later Sunday, UNHCR said it had appealed for $111 million to assist one million displaced people in Lebanon through to the end of 2024, as part of the UN’s wider appeal.
“It is an urgent moral imperative to help the people affected by this recent escalation,” he said, adding: “they should not pay the price for the abysmal failure to find political solutions and end this vicious cycle of violence.”