Fatima Nazha slept on the street for two days after she and her family fled their home in Beirut’s southern suburbs following an Israeli mass evacuation order. All of the schools the government turned into shelters were full, and the family couldn’t afford a hotel or an apartment. Eventually, she and her husband moved into a tent in the country’s biggest stadium, while their kids and grandchildren found shelter near the southern coastal city of Sidon.

In just 10 days, more than 800,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced by war. This comes just over a year since the last conflict uprooted more than a million Lebanese from their homes—equivalent to 1 in every 7 people in the small nation, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council. Many displaced families don’t have a place to stay, and the cash-strapped government has only been able to accommodate roughly 120,000 people as it scrambles to open shelters and bring in more supplies.

Nazha, who uses a wheelchair, said being forced from her home has been far more difficult this time compared to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah more than a year ago. “The strikes used to target a specific area, but now they’re hitting all the areas,” she said, taking a drag off a cigarette. The strikes targeting the Iran-backed militant group have been more intense and unpredictable, and Israel’s evacuation order came abruptly, leaving her unable to gather all of her belongings.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry reported that more than 700 people, including 103 children, have died in the war. Israel escalated its strikes on its northern neighbor after Hezbollah fired several rockets into Israel following the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the start of the war.

Most Lebanese had hoped Hezbollah wouldn’t respond to the attack on Iran, as the militant group’s support for another Iran-backed group, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in 2023 led to Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Resentment toward Hezbollah and its backers has surged amid ongoing internal tensions in the deeply divided country.

Fearing becoming a target, landlords have been hiking apartment rents to dissuade new tenants. Hotels, meanwhile, have been vetting guests more strictly since Israel struck two hotel rooms, stating they were targeting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members operating in Beirut.

Some who don’t have family or friends to stay with, or who cannot afford an apartment or hotel room, have been sleeping on the streets or in their cars around central Beirut, trading comfort for safety. However, that sense of safety was shattered after an overnight Israeli strike killed at least eight people and wounded more than 30 others in the capital’s Ramlet el-Bayda neighborhood, where many displaced people had pitched tents by the sea or slept on mattresses on the boardwalk.

Humanitarian groups, already saddled by years of underfunding, are struggling to keep up and warn of an impending humanitarian crisis. “The needs are escalating much faster than our capacity to respond,” said Mathieu Luciano, head of the International Organization for Migration in Lebanon, during a recent news briefing.

The government is using Lebanon’s largest sports stadium as a makeshift shelter, where Nazha, her husband, and more than 800 other people have been sleeping in the semi-open corridors under the stands. While the facility has toilets and sinks, it lacks showers and has only sporadic electricity.

“It’s not enough that they bring us food. A tin of sardines or a loaf of bread or a gallon of water, that’s not enough,” Nazha said from her foldout bed.

In the stadium’s parking lot—where Lebanon’s national soccer team regularly plays in peacetime—children played a pickup game as an Israeli drone flew overhead, its distinctive whirring noise audible. From there, one can see and hear the bombs exploding daily in nearby neighborhoods.

Naji Hammoud, who oversees sporting facilities for the Lebanese Youth and Sports Ministry, said he didn’t expect to have to take on such a heavy responsibility. “It’s a race against time,” he said, as aid workers and volunteers scrambled to pitch tents.

More than a million people were displaced in the last war, but that occurred toward the end of it, after a year of limited fighting that gradually escalated. This time, what took months before happened in only days. Hezbollah’s initial rocket attack, followed by Israel’s swift bombardments overnight, rattled Lebanon, and the mass evacuation notices caught people off guard.

Israel first called on dozens of villages south of the Litani River to flee north. It later warned residents to evacuate Dahiyeh, a predominantly Shiite suburb on Beirut’s southern edge and one of the country’s most densely populated areas. All main roads leading to the capital from southern Lebanon were gridlocked as people scrambled to find safe shelter.

“We were on the road for two days until we found this place here that accepted us,” said Seganish Gogamo, a worker from Ethiopia who fled the southern city of Nabatieh and found shelter in a Beirut church hosting migrant workers from Asia and Africa. She escaped in the middle of the night after intense airstrikes.

There is no end in sight to the fighting as some 100,000 Israeli troops have amassed along the United Nations-mandated Blue Line, which divides the two countries in anticipation of a possible ground invasion. Many fear the Israel-Hezbollah conflict could continue beyond the Iran war.

Joe Sayyah was among dozens of residents who remained in their border village, Alma al-Shaab, during the first days of the war, hoping they wouldn’t have to leave. It’s a Christian village, and Israel has mostly targeted Shiite communities where Hezbollah operates.

Sayyah and others appealed to the Vatican and the U.S., describing themselves as bystanders in the conflict and insisting there was no military presence or activity among them. They spent days sheltering in a church.

But when his friend was killed in an Israeli drone strike while watering his plants, they knew it was time to leave. Sayyah and the others rang the church bell one last time before departing for the capital in a convoy escorted by U.N. peacekeepers.

After arriving at a church in the northern outskirts of Beirut to hold a funeral Mass for his friend, Sayyah said the sense of relief that came with reaching somewhere safe was quickly replaced by the grim realization that this war could be different from the last.

“This time around, there’s a huge possibility we may not be able to go back to our village,” he said.
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2026-03-14/humanitarian-crisis-feared-as-war-displaces-nearly-million-lebanese