“It is impossible to meet the needs of more than a million people suddenly uprooted, displaced and dispossessed without additional resources coming in,” said Matthew Hollingworth, WFP Country Director in Lebanon (from Beirut): “This was not a country that was well prepared because of all the challenges it has faced in recent years. So it will be a battle.”
A week after the UN $426 million appeal To help those affected by the Lebanon crisis, contributions have been reached just over 12 percentor $51.4 million.
Aid teams are committed to helping anyone in need and especially the most vulnerable, but Mr Hollingworth warned that many of those uprooted by the rapid escalation of fighting had little choice but to leave their homes with nothing.
Uprooted in no time
“(We’ve had) horrific cases of forced evacuation orders coming out with little time for people to prepare and leave,” Mr Hollingworth said.
Families displaced over the past year “who had prepared… are much, much better off than the much larger majority today, who in some cases have only hours left before their areas come under bombardment.”
Amid intense Israeli bombing of Beirut and southern Lebanon linked to the war in Gaza, the seven districts in the frontline areas south of the country bordering Israel and Beirut’s southern suburbs have lost “hundreds of thousands of people”, the veteran reported counselor. “Many of these cities, towns and suburbs are now nothing but rubble.”
Paying the ultimate price
After COVID-19 and the devastating Beirut port explosion in 2020, poverty has soared in the country that has struggled to accommodate more than a million Syrian refugees amid a protracted political crisis.
In a new call to stop violence in Gaza, Lebanon and beyond, Jeremy Laurence of the UN human rights office said: OHCHRsaid citizens “continue to pay the ultimate price, whether it is the closure of hospitals, a million displaced, civilians killed, schools affected; the devastation is as unimaginable for all people in Lebanon as in Gaza. We cannot let this happen again.”
Shelters ‘choc-a-block’
According to the WFP, more than 200,000 people now live in 973 formal shelters in Beirut and the north of the country. About 773 of these are “absolutely packed”, Mr Hollingworth said, adding that people in the south had decided to move not just because their land and homes had been destroyed, but because they had “lost family, friends and communities and they are extremely scared of what comes next.” .
The aid organization’s update comes in the middle of reporting renewed rocket fire on the northern Israeli city of Haifa by Hezbollah on Tuesday. The armed group has been firing rockets into northern Israel since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, causing tens of thousands of Israelis to flee.
Healthcare under fire
According to the UN World Health Organization (WHO), Seventeen attacks on healthcare workers and healthcare workers since September 16 have left 65 dead and 42 injured.
In the south, more than 96 care centers and health facilities have been forced to close. Five hospitals are now not functioning “due to physical or infrastructural damage”. WHO‘s Ian Clarke, Deputy Incident Manager for Lebanon.
Speaking via video from Beirut, he said another four hospitals have been partially evacuated to maintain emergency services, with patients needing critical dialysis and cancer care referred to other hospitals.
UN humanitarian workers have stressed the need to keep access to land, air and sea open for Lebanon, which relies on imports for most of its needs.
It is reported that 1,900 hectares of farmland has been burned in the south of the country over the past year and “particularly in recent weeks”, WFP’s Mr Hollingworth said. In addition, 12,000 hectares of agricultural land in one of the most productive areas of the country have been abandoned and around 46,000 farmers have been severely affected by the crisis. “Olive harvests in the south will not take place, banana and citrus harvests will not take place,” he noted.