The streets of Beirut, Lebanon, were eerily empty on Saturday morning. Most stores were shuttered, and few cars passed along the usually bustling streets. Drones buzzed overhead.
After a barrage of Israeli airstrikes overnight, the city was coming to terms with a startling new reality: The simmering conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, once mostly contained to southern Lebanon, had firmly reached the capital. Now, many people said, even Beirut was not safe.
Amid that ghostliness, thousands of residents from the Dahiya, the crowded area south of Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway, were scattered across the city after fleeing their homes as the Israeli strikes rained down.
They found refuge on sidewalks, on the beachfront and in small parks downtown — areas that they hoped were far enough from the Dahiya to be safe. Some had suitcases and backpacks, hastily packed the night before. Others had rushed out with nothing but their cellphones and the clothes they were wearing.
“Nobody has any idea what to do,” said Zakiya Khattab, 67, who had spent the night with her son and grandchildren in Martyrs’ Square in downtown Beirut. “We would love to go back, but we can’t — it’s not safe.”
The family fled their home in the Dahiya around 1 a.m. on Saturday, she said, after their house began shaking from the Israeli airstrikes. The tremors were so strong that four of her grandchildren leaped out of bed, terrified.
Ayoub Merhe, 45, her son, said: “I told them, ‘Don’t be afraid, stay calm. They are just shooting in the street.’” But after leaving his children’s room, Mr. Merhe said, he immediately packed a bag with a blanket, bread and a change of clothes, and brought his family to Martyrs’ Square. They had spent the night trying to sleep on the sidewalk, his 10 children shivering from the sea breeze, he said.
“We’ve lived our whole life through wars,” Mr. Merhe said. “We’re accustomed to it.”
With most residents evacuated, the Dahiya was like a ghost town on Saturday. Glass and debris from the overnight strikes littered the street, and the sidewalks were empty. On the edges of the neighborhood, families who had not yet fled were loading up cars with bags of their belongings.
Others sat on the curb, unsure of where to go.
Hassan Jibaie stood outside his banged-up apartment building. Across the street, the ground floor of a building had been blown out by an airstrike a day earlier.
He had seen messages from the Israeli military warning people to evacuate, he said, but the order had used outdated descriptors for his street — it had mentioned a “Cafe Rony,” apparently referring to a building that had not housed a cafe for years — so he and his neighbors had no idea that their street would be targeted.
“We didn’t even know it was called that,” he said, laughing incredulously.
A man on a motorbike pulled up. “Whatever they do to us, we’re not scared,” the man said, waving at the damage. “It can all be rebuilt.”
Across the neighborhood, posters and banners of slain Hezbollah fighters were strung across the street and plastered on the sides of buildings.
There are also many images of Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, in the neighborhood. Now he, too, is among those whom the group and its allies call “martyrs.”
“It’s not going to stop,” said Hassan Darchichi, 60, who was born and raised in the Dahiya. “This is just the beginning.”
As he spoke, a piece of a nearby building that was damaged in the Israeli strikes crashed onto the street. Mr. Darchichi said he had never left the neighborhood in previous rounds of conflict, and he did not plan to now.
At Bahman Hospital, a nearby Hezbollah hospital, a wounded patient was being wheeled out on a stretcher, headed for another hospital. Lebanon’s health ministry has ordered hospitals in the area evacuated, and the Dahiya facility was busy as its staff members rushed to go.
“They told us to leave,” said a nurse, Maryam Chahine, who was standing outside, looking disoriented. “I don’t know where I’m supposed to go.”
Overhead, they could hear the whine of a drone. People looked up, panicking: What did it mean? Would it strike?
A few miles away, other Dahiya residents who had fled were debating whether it was safe enough to go home — and if not, where they could find shelter.
In Horsh Beirut, a park packed with pine trees on the outskirts of the Dahiya, Ali Jaber, 29, was sitting in the shade with his mother, father and siblings. Two backpacks, a pile of blankets and a bag of bread were propped against a nearby tree, along with a white bird cage, the family’s yellow canary flitting around inside.
“We have no idea what we’re supposed to do, where we’re supposed to go,” Mr. Jaber said. “Our house is in a relatively safe area — it hasn’t been targeted — but, of course, it could be, and we have to stay safe.”
As word spread on Saturday that the Israeli assault had killed Mr. Nasrallah, it added to the sense of unease.
“If Hassan Nasrallah doesn’t exist anymore, we don’t exist anymore,” said Samar Hussam, a Dahiya resident.
Ms. Hussam said she had panicked on Friday night as word spread that the Israeli airstrikes were targeting Mr. Nasrallah. She and her husband and children fled to a small park in downtown Beirut and spent the night there.
Early Saturday, her husband returned to collect a few supplies from their home: a blanket, changes of clothes, some food. He found their apartment building still standing, but piles of rubble filled the streets around it. Dust and black smoke hung in the air.
“We are loyal to the resistance,” Ms. Hussam said. “We are willing to sacrifice our lives and do whatever it takes for the resistance to survive.”
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