UN official says 100,000 Lebanese are in shelters after unprecedented Israeli warnings

BEIRUT, March 6 - The number of displaced people in Lebanon is expected to rapidly increase after unprecedented Israeli evacuation orders covering large parts of the country, with about 100,000 already cramming shelters, a senior U.N. official said on Friday. Read more at straitstimes.com.

BEIRUT, March 6 - The number of displaced people in Lebanon is expected to rapidly increase after unprecedented Israeli evacuation orders covering large parts of the country, with about 100,000 already cramming shelters, a senior U.N. official said on Friday.

With hostilities raging between Israel and Hezbollah amid a spreading U.S.-led war on Iran, the Israeli military on Thursday ordered residents out of Beirut's southern suburbs, including districts controlled by the Iran-backed group, before intensifying its air strikes on the area.

Israel has also ordered people out of areas of the eastern Bekaa Valley, and a swathe of the south.

"What we saw in the last couple of days is, I would say ... unprecedented in terms of the scale here in Lebanon of the warnings, the displacement orders, and the reaction, the panic also, that this has all created," Imran Riza, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Lebanon, told Reuters.

He noted that over a million people were uprooted in Lebanon during a war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2024, 75-80% of whom did not go to collective shelters, and that this time the majority would probably not go to shelters either.

"There are about 100,000 people that are, as of this morning, in some 477 collective shelters. There are some 57 shelters that still have some space, but basically the capacity is being reached very, very quickly," Riza said.