GENEVA: About 19,646 people have been internally displaced in south Lebanon and elsewhere since early October, a UN agency said on Monday.

“An increase in cross-border incidents” has resulted in the displacement of 19,646 people in Lebanon, “both within the south and elsewhere within the country”, said the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

“We expect the numbers to rise as the cross-border tensions continue” or if there is an escalation in violence, IOM spokesperson Mohammedali Abunajela told AFP in a statement.

The IOM’s Abunajela said that “amidst a deteriorating economic situation and the significant rise in poverty across all populations in Lebanon, internal displacements may add additional stress to the resources of host communities”.

“The country’s health system is facing severe resource shortages, including medicines” and medical personnel, Abunajela said.

“In this context, responding to large-scale displacement and health causalities that might occur… may overwhelm the already fragile health system,” he warned.

Since Israel’s invasion of Gaza, Hezbollah and Israeli forces have been exchanging fire on an increasingly frequent basis along the border.

Most of the displaced are currently “sheltered in host and family settings, while there are three designated schools, managed by local authorities that are also used as shelters”, Abunajela said.

‘Economic crisis’

Many who have fled south Lebanon have moved north to the coastal city of Tyre, which is 18 km from the border.

Inaya Ezzeddine, a lawmaker from Tyre, said the movement was putting a strain on families hosting the displaced and the government of a country struggling with an economic crisis.

“This war is happening amid a very big economic crisis and people don’t have provisions,” Ezzeddine said, adding that around 6,000 people had sought refuge in Tyre and three schools had been used to shelter some of them.

“We cannot open all schools because schools are still operating, every school we open (for the displaced) were depriving its pupils from using it,” she added.

School teacher Yolla Ali al Swaid fled to Tyre after she was injured in the shelling that hit her home in the border village of Dhaira, an area where there have regularly been exchanges of fire.

“The school’s four floors are all full. We’re 11 people in the room with my sister’s family,” Ali al Swaid told Reuters, adding the crowding was encouraging some people to consider going back home.

“There are people who are thinking about hanging white sheets on their homes when they go back there,” said Swaid, who also fled her home in the war in 2006.

At least 40 people have been killed on the Lebanese side of the border, according to an AFP tally — including at least four civilians, one of them Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah.

Four people have been killed in Israel, including three soldiers and one civilian.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2023