Fatme A. is trying to preserve a sense of normalcy while living among improvised tents, stacked mattresses and dozens of other families packed into a converted building in central Beirut.
About 250 families shelter in the Azarieh buildings — a makeshift camp with running water, a communal kitchen and aid supplies but little privacy, quiet or personal space. Fatme spends most of her time inside a small cloth tent surrounded by the bags, blankets and a few belongings she was able to carry when they fled. She avoids the shared bathroom because “you have to queue and everybody looks at you,” she says. Her husband, a carpenter, has been repairing and organizing for other residents; his work helped their family secure two tents. They share the space with their 7‑year‑old daughter and Fatme’s mother.
Days are spent trying to get by. Nights are harder. “The explosions are so loud,” she says. Many in the camp sleep fully dressed out of fear.
The fighting has moved beyond the regions once considered front lines and into other parts of Beirut. Israeli strikes have widened to central areas and sometimes arrive without warning. Hezbollah — a powerful Lebanese political and military organization allied with Iran and designated in whole or in part as a terrorist group by several states — has been drawn into the wider confrontation following reported developments involving Iran. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has spoken of creating a buffer zone as far south as the Litani River, saying border villages would be cleared and houses destroyed. Lebanon’s defence minister, Michel Menassa, called those plans an attempt to “impose a new occupation,” warning they would forcibly displace hundreds of thousands and devastate towns. Ten European foreign ministers and the EU’s top diplomat urged Israel to respect Lebanon’s territorial integrity.
“We fled, but we know there’s nowhere that’s really safe. But there’s nothing more we can do,” Fatme says. Until recently the family lived in Ouzai in Dahiyeh — an area often portrayed externally as a Hezbollah stronghold but in reality a dense, busy suburb of shops, restaurants and ordinary family life. “We had a normal family life there,” she remembers. “My daughter went to school, my husband worked and I ran the house. Our life was good.”
Violence ramped up after late February, when Hezbollah began launching rockets and drones into Israel and Israel replied with aerial strikes. Although a ceasefire had been arranged in November 2024, attacks continued. By February 2026 UNIFIL and the Lebanese government reported more than 15,400 ceasefire violations and said over 370 people in Lebanon had been killed by Israeli fire. “The continuing Israeli attacks don’t just destroy houses and infrastructure; they erode the pillars of daily life and recovery,” Jeremy Ristord of Doctors Without Borders said.
When the fighting intensified, Fatme’s family left in their car. They returned briefly twice but ultimately fled again to protect their daughter. “It took me five years to get pregnant,” Fatme says. Her daughter still shows trauma from the 2024 war: she startles at loud noises and covers her ears. After fleeing this time, the family slept in their car before finding space in Azarieh.
“I really miss my own home — my life, my things, my routine. Just a month ago, everything looked so different. Our lives have been turned upside down,” Fatme says. When her daughter cries at the sound of explosions in the shelters, Fatme pulls her close and tries to calm her.
The humanitarian toll is large. At a UN Security Council meeting on March 31, the UN emergency relief coordinator Tom Fletcher said roughly 1,240 people had been killed and about 3,500 injured in Lebanon, and more than 1.1 million people had been displaced, many of them children. Fletcher warned of “a cycle of coercive displacement,” calling forced movement a painful last resort rather than a solution.
Despite fleeting moments of relief — seeing children play, hearing her daughter laugh — Fatme is repeatedly pulled back to the present by drone noise and explosions. What remains of their former life is the family itself, two tents and a makeshift existence.
“We are not the first, and we won’t be the last family that has had to flee,” she says. “We’ve just got to hold on. I want people to know that we had it good here, and that we lived with dignity.”