A humanitarian crisis is looming in Lebanon, where more than 750,000 people have been displaced in the 12 days since the United States and Israel began their war against Iran and its allies in the Middle East, figures released by the Lebanese government show.
The pace of displacement was “unprecedented,” along with the “panic that all of this has created,” Imran Riza, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, told Reuters on Tuesday. Between Monday and Tuesday alone, more than 100,000 people were registered as displaced, according to the data.
Most come from southern Lebanon, where the Israeli military has implemented sweeping evacuation orders as it launches multiple attacks in the region, a stronghold of the Hezbollah militant group. The US military has not attacked Lebanon.
The Israeli military said on Tuesday it was “operating with determination” against Hezbollah after the Tehran-backed group launched missiles at Israel in what it said was retaliation for the joint US-Israeli war against Iran.
Since the start of the war on February 28, more than 570 people have been killed and around 1,400 injured as of Tuesday, according to Lebanese government figures. According to UNICEF, there are dozens of children among the dead.
sleeping in the streets
The numbers “are really shocking because they really jump very high,” Dr. Tania Baban, Lebanon country director for MedGlobal, a Chicago-based nonprofit, told NBC News in a phone interview Wednesday.
Baban said part of the rapid increase in the number of people identified as internally displaced was likely due to the recent launch of an online platform that allows people to formally register with the government as displaced.
The overall total was probably over 750,000, as not everyone will have been able to access the platform, he added.
While data showed just over 120,000 people were listed as staying in shelters set up across the country, Baban said many were sleeping in tents on Beirut’s streets or in parked cars.
“People who have bigger cars are luckier,” he said, adding that he had come across one father slept “in a chair on the sidewalk” while his family, including four children, slept in their car.
Some decided not to move to shelters in northern Lebanon and opted to stay in Beirut so they could stay closer to their homes in the south, he said.
Riza, at the United Nations, told Reuters that most of the one million people displaced in Lebanon during the war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2024 did not go to collective shelters. That would likely be the case during the current hostilities consuming the region, he added.
“There are about 100,000 people who are, as of this morning, in about 477 collective shelters. There are about 57 shelters that still have some space, but basically capacity is being reached very, very quickly,” he said, with churches and the Beirut Sports City Stadium converted into shelter sites.
Baban said humanitarian groups on the ground were also hearing about local municipalities seeking to discourage residents from renting homes to displaced people coming from the south out of fear that their areas could be attacked if suspected Hezbollah members were among them.
The widespread displacement and rising death toll in Lebanon come as Human Rights Watch released a report this week accusing the Israeli military of illegally using white phosphorus munitions on homes in the southern Lebanese city of Yohmor on March 3.
He said he had verified at least eight images that appeared to show white phosphorus used in a residential area of the city and civil defense workers responding to fires.
“The incendiary effects of white phosphorus can cause death or cruel injuries that cause lifelong suffering,” Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch, warned in a statement Tuesday.
The Israeli military said in a statement Wednesday that it “is currently unaware of and cannot confirm the use of projectiles containing white phosphorus in Lebanon as claimed.” While its main smoke shells do not contain the substance, it said some of them did contain “a certain amount,” which “are legal under international law.” These were used to create smoke screens and not to target or cause fire, he added.
Separately, the French Foreign Ministry called an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Wednesday to discuss the growing humanitarian crisis unfolding in Lebanon. He said in a statement Tuesday that he was “deeply concerned by the ongoing displacement of civilians.”
He also called on Israel to “refrain from any ground or long-term intervention in Lebanon” and condemned Hezbollah for launching attacks against Israel in the midst of a broader war.
