NGOs urge ceasefire in Lebanon amid escalating Israel-Hezbollah conflict

Leading humanitarian groups on Thursday called for a ceasefire in Lebanon, voicing concern at the growing impact of Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah on civilians.

“The last couple of weeks have been a complete nightmare,” said Jennifer Moorehead, Lebanon country director for Save the Children.

More than 1.2 million people or 20 per cent of the population had left their homes and were on the move, she said, creating a “crisis of alarming proportions”, Beirut-based Moorehead told a video conference.

Israel has launched massive air strikes on Hezbollah and this week sent ground forces across its northern border, which the group has hit with rocket attacks in the last 12 months. Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold has also been hit in a series of attacks.

Representatives from rights monitor Amnesty International, aid agency Oxfam, medical charity Medecins du Monde, as well as Refugees International and Action Against Hunger called the situation “dire”.

Families were sleeping in the street with shelters hit and hospitals overwhelmed with casualties, particularly in targeted regions, they said.

Ahmad Chreif, deputy medical coordinator at Medecins du Monde in Beirut, said 867 centres have opened for displaced people, including in schools and universities, but 643 of them had already reached capacity.

The NGOs called for an immediate ceasefire to prevent the situation worsening.

“This indiscriminate military attack that we are now seeing is not just going to harm… Hezbollah, it will harm Lebanese,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International. “It will harm Syrian refugees, it will harm the Palestinian refugees who remain in Lebanon,” he told reporters.

Konyndyk called on “global donors” to scale up their humanitarian response, assessing the need to open a maritime corridor to allow aid to get in, as happened during the 2006 Lebanon war with Israel.

“We are very concerned about the availability of essential supplies, including food, medicine and fuel for residents who chose not to leave their homes in South Lebanon or who could not leave their homes,” said Amnesty’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, Aya Majzoub.