'You should leave': Tensions high as Lebanon faces frightening prospect of possible ground assault

The Israeli airstrikes have left people in the south of Lebanon feeling there are no safe places around here now.

Dozens more were killed in another intense day of Israeli bombing including more children – with whole families missing and unaccounted for.

Follow latest: Israel preparing ‘for possible ground invasion’

One Lebanese army general told us: “This area is not safe now. You should leave. We are evacuating everyone from here.”

He was with a group of soldiers in an army Humvee and said his men had recently evacuated residents from the Christian town of Aalma El Chaeb further south near the border.

This was an area we had visited previously with UN peacekeepers and where the residents insisted Hezbollah remained outside the town.

It was notable for being remarkably unaffected despite the devastation evident in all the surrounding villages hugging the border.

The situation is now considered too risky even for those residents who’d very publicly and successfully rejected any Hezbollah involvement or interaction.

As we drove around the south, we saw craters on the side of the main coastal highway linking the area to the capital Beirut.

There were two upturned cars which had ended up on the other side of the road. On one street, rows of shops and businesses appeared to have been blasted.

There were what looked like a woman’s individual ID photographs scattered on the ground, along with clothing and a baby’s bib. A small fish tank in one of the shops still had its inhabitants swimming around – but very little else looked intact.

A residential apartment on the outskirts of Tyre appeared to have been freshly hit when we turned up, with smoke wafting out from the rubble and a fire still burning inside.

A fire truck pulled up while we were there and moments later, we were hastily moved on by Hezbollah supporters who appeared on motorbikes.

“Leave the area,” one said, saying it was unsafe because of escaping gas. We spotted two lone women dragging suitcases behind them as they made their way along the road out of the area.

Many of the schools and universities have been turned into temporary shelters and we were at the Sidon Faculty of Law as several truck-loads of provisions were ferried into a crowd of anxious and angry displaced people.

Edouard Beigbeder from UNICEF told us: “They are traumatised. They’ve lost their houses. They’ve seen their houses being burnt.

“They’ve lost their income. They’ve lost many things.”

Hector Hajjar, the Lebanese minister of social affairs who was visiting the shelter, brushed aside our attempt to ask him about the situation and his armed bodyguard tried to block the path of one fraught woman who heckled him as he walked away.

“If you’re going to come here, at least listen to us,” she plaintively shouted after him. The minister turned briefly to talk to her but whatever he said failed to pacify her.

“They’re not listening to us,” she told us. “Everyone’s just looking after themselves… we don’t have mattresses, covers or pillows… and our children are sleeping on the ground.”

Our presence at the shelter seems to rile many of those displaced. It’s not clear whether it’s because we are clearly Western, because we are media, or because they are simply just very highly stressed. Maybe all three. Tensions are high and tempers frayed.

One young mother holding a toddler on her hip told us she’d fled the bombing further south with her five children and moved north to Sidon just hours earlier.

“There’s a lot of destruction,” she said of the home she’d just left. “People died, houses got destroyed, the roads were blocked.”

She added: “There’s no more bread, no more food, no more water.”

A young man standing next to her called Yousuf told us it wasn’t just Hezbollah fighters or supporters being targeted.

“They’re not differentiating between fighters and civilians… this aggression is intensely hitting civilian areas – they’re not differentiating at all,” he said.

As another day of Israeli bombing slipped into night, we could hear from our accommodation the regular booms of missiles hitting targets.

Hezbollah says it will not back down and it claimed it had fired a ballistic missile for the first time at intelligence headquarters near Tel Aviv. The missile was intercepted.

We’ve heard a few Hezbollah rockets being fired over the past few days but there seems to be a marked drop in their salvoes around where we are, anyway.

The Israeli forces and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have insisted they are pressing on and the army chief has said these strikes are preparations for a possible ground assault.

Rhetoric or not, that’s a frightening prospect for the Lebanese people caught up in the thick of this bombardment.

Alex Crawford is reporting with cameraman Jake Britton, specialist producer Chris Cunningham and Lebanon producers Jihad Jineid and Sami Zein

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