Voices of Lebanon: People fleeing for their lives as Israel attacks

People around the country speak of their fear, their tension and their yearning for home.

Beirut, Lebanon – Twelve-year-old Zahra woke up afraid on Monday morning.

“I was so stressed because of the bombs,” the little girl from Borj Qalaouiye told Al Jazeera.

Zahra’s village lies between Nabatieh and Bint Jbeil in south Lebanon, but in October last year, she and her family fled to Laylaki in Beirut’s southern suburbs, shortly after Hezbollah and Israel began exchanging cross-border attacks.

On the same day, she got another fright.

“I was so scared and then I saw on the news they were going to bomb our building,” she said of the family’s refuge in Beirut.