Three strikes hit the basement of a building in the Bachoura neighbourhood of central Beirut, sending clouds of dust and debris into the street. A week later, another strike levelled the entire 10-storey building. Both times, the deafening blasts of the Israeli bombs echoed through the halls of nearby St Joseph Church, where more than 160 displaced migrant workers and their families were sheltering.
Israel’s relentless bombing raids and escalating ground invasion in Lebanon have displaced more than a fifth of the Lebanese population since 2 March. Many of the displaced are Shi’a Muslims fleeing the south, the Bekaa Valley and the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut, where Israel has issued a blanket evacuation warning for an area housing about half a million residents. Lebanon also hosts about 1.5 million Syrian refugees, a quarter of a million Palestinian refugees and hundreds of thousands of migrant workers.
