JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
In Lebanon, it's been the deadliest day of Israeli airstrikes in almost 20 years. The Lebanese Health Ministry says nearly 500 people have been killed, most of them in the south. That is where the militant group Hezbollah has been trading attacks with Israel across the border since the war in Gaza began. More than 1,600 people have been wounded. Israel's military says it is not ruling out a ground invasion. Tens of thousands of residents fled any way that they could. NPR's Jane Arraf met some of them on the road to Beirut just outside the city of Sidon. She joins us now. Hi, Jane.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Hi, Juana.
SUMMERS: Jane, what did you see?
ARRAF: Well, south of Beirut, there's a four-lane highway that normally goes both ways, but tonight that had been turned into a one-way escape route.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR HORN HONKING)
ARRAF: People squeezed onto cars and buses. There were children sitting on tops of vehicles and even crammed into vegetable trucks. We saw two men sitting in the trunk of a car. Soldiers waved them on. A businessman from the border village of Nabatieh, Bilal Hemadi, said he evacuated his wife and three children after receiving a call on his landline in broken Arabic.
BILAL HEMADI: This came by phone from a number from Israel. Hello. How are you? Please leave all your work and go outside.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR HORN HONKING)
HEMADI: I said to him, OK, thank you.
ARRAF: And by outside, he meant leave the area. Hemadi has friends to stay within Beirut. But a lot of people didn't know where they were going to. Normally when people flee, they pile mattresses and other belongings into their cars. This time, people left with almost nothing.
SUMMERS: And, Jane, these airstrikes come on the heels of those unprecedented attacks last week that included pagers and walkie-talkies exploding.
ARRAF: They did. Israel said the exploding communications devices - several thousand of them - were targeting Hezbollah. But those attacks also killed and wounded office and medical workers and civilians, including children. And then on Friday, Israeli airstrikes collapsed a building in the Lebanese capitol, killing a senior Hezbollah commander and at least 16 fighters but also dozens of civilians, including children.
SUMMERS: And, Jane, the strikes today - were they limited to southern Lebanon, that area that's close to the border with Israel?
ARRAF: No. It was a really wide path. They also targeted the eastern Beqaa Valley, where Hezbollah operates. They hid in the north, near the Syrian border. And they also struck again the mostly Shia southern suburbs of Beirut. Today's strikes also included the central region of Byblos, 80 miles from the border. That was believed to be targeting Shia villages in that mixed Christian-Muslim region. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Lebanese people in a video, telling them that Hezbollah was endangering them, and they needed to leave.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Please get out of harm's way now. Once our operation is finished, you can come back safely to your homes.
ARRAF: But there's already been immense destruction from Israeli strikes, and many people won't have homes to go back to.
SUMMERS: Jane, how have Hezbollah and the Lebanese government responded?
ARRAF: Hezbollah has fired rockets into northern Israel, but the attacks have clearly left them at a disadvantage and indicated serious security failures. Hezbollah's deputy chief told mourners at a funeral in Beirut Sunday that it was now an open-ended war. And the Israeli military is not ruling out a ground offensive, so many people here fear that there's much more to come.
SUMMERS: That's NPR's Jane Arraf, back in Beirut now. Jane, thank you.
ARRAF: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
