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Israel Hits Tower In Beirut, Warns Of More Bombing
A family waits on a corner as they and hundreds of other residents of a southern Beirut neighborhood prepare to evacuate in anticipation of Israeli airstrikes.
(By Spencer Platt -- Getty Images)
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By the end of the day, all three neighborhoods stood empty and forlorn, with only young men of fighting age lounging on sidewalks. The government dispatched buses to a nearby pickup point to take fleeing families without their own cars to the resort town of Juniyah, a Christian community about 20 miles north of Beirut. Officials said the newly displaced people would be put up in the city hall.
The residents of Al Shiyah, where Shiites and Christians live together, were among the first to flee. An Israeli airstrike there killed 47 people Monday night in the deadliest single attack of the war.
Shafiqa Ozib, a 90-year-old woman sitting on her doorstep, surveyed the silent streets of Al Shiyah with no reaction late Thursday.
Only a few cars passed by, carrying residents who had come to pick up their belongings before heading out to take shelter with relatives or friends.
Ozib was not going anywhere, she said her only concern seemed to be getting a bottle of water to tide her through the night. "Where would I go?" she responded when asked if she planned to join her fleeing neighbors. To a journalist pressing her on how she dared to stay after the Israeli warning, she said, "What do you write, philosophy?"
Abbas Fawaz, a 27-year-old businessman who lives next door, made sure Ozib had her bottle of water, then piled some clothes into his BMW sport-utility vehicle and sped away. But around the corner, Ouein Aboud, who works in a restaurant in the city center, said he, too, planned to stay.
"I'm not going anywhere," he vowed. As he spoke, two other young men emerged from a doorway, one with a pistol in his belt. Others settled in chairs up and down the streets and prepared for nightfall.
Moore reported from Jerusalem.
