Constant explosions in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Israel carried out airstrikes this week, forced Zeina Naza and her young daughter to camp on the city's beach, seeking safety from the war in Lebanon, reports Reuters.
She and some others from those suburbs, known as Dahiyeh, a stronghold of Israel's enemy the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, sleep on blankets or in the open or in tents and other makeshift shelters with no safer place to go.
Israel's intensified military campaign in Lebanon over the past two weeks has driven millions of people from their homes in the south, in Beirut and in the Bekaa Valley in the east, the Lebanese government said.
Israel says its campaign is necessary to make its northern regions safe from Hezbollah rocket fire and allow thousands of its citizens to return home.
"There was a bombing in Al Salem settlement. We stayed there for a while and my family fled. The situation we live in is very difficult... people are dying," said Zeina.
She and her daughter spent the night sleeping on the beach, walking along the coast in the central parts of Beirut, which in peaceful times is the center of city life, filled with families walking or sitting and eating.
The government and private or charitable organizations have set up numerous shelters in schools and other facilities to accommodate people displaced by the fighting.
But Zeina said that all the facilities she visited were full.
Nearby, Mohamed Terkmene, a Syrian living in Lebanon who was also displaced by the conflict, said he slept on the beach for four days.
He said the soldiers came to tell him and his neighbors to evacuate their homes in Dahijeh.
"We can't sleep and we don't know how long we will stay here. A month, two months, a week or two, until this war is resolved," he said.
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