‘You should leave’: Tensions high as Lebanon faces frightening prospect of possible ground assault
The Israeli airstrikes have left people in the south of Lebanon feeling there are no safe places around here now.
Dozens more were killed in another intense day of Israeli bombing including more children – with whole families missing and unaccounted for.
Follow latest: Israel preparing ‘for possible ground invasion’
One Lebanese army general told us: “This area is not safe now. You should leave. We are evacuating everyone from here.”
He was with a group of soldiers in an army Humvee and said his men had recently evacuated residents from the Christian town of Aalma El Chaeb further south near the border.
This was an area we had visited previously with UN peacekeepers and where the residents insisted Hezbollah remained outside the town.
It was notable for being remarkably unaffected despite the devastation evident in all the surrounding villages hugging the border.
The situation is now considered too risky even for those residents who’d very publicly and successfully rejected any Hezbollah involvement or interaction.
As we drove around the south, we saw craters on the side of the main coastal highway linking the area to the capital Beirut.
A crater on the side of a road after an Israeli airstrike
Destruction from an Israeli airstrike on the outskirts of Tyre
There were two upturned cars which had ended up on the other side of the road. On one street, rows of shops and businesses appeared to have been blasted.
There were what looked like a woman’s individual ID photographs scattered on the ground, along with clothing and a baby’s bib. A small fish tank in one of the shops still had its inhabitants swimming around – but very little else looked intact.
A residential apartment on the outskirts of Tyre appeared to have been freshly hit when we turned up, with smoke wafting out from the rubble and a fire still burning inside.
A woman’s photo was among the items on the ground
Buildings destroyed by an Israeli airstrike on the outskirts of Tyre
A fire truck pulled up while we were there and moments later, we were hastily moved on by Hezbollah supporters who appeared on motorbikes.
“Leave the area,” one said, saying it was unsafe because of escaping gas. We spotted two lone women dragging suitcases behind them as they made their way along the road out of the area.
Many of the schools and universities have been turned into temporary shelters and we were at the Sidon Faculty of Law as several truck-loads of provisions were ferried into a crowd of anxious and angry displaced people.
Edouard Beigbeder from UNICEF told us: “They are traumatised. They’ve lost their houses. They’ve seen their houses being burnt.
“They’ve lost their income. They’ve lost many things.”
Edouard Beigbeder from UNICEF speaks to Sky News
Hector Hajjar, the Lebanese minister of social affairs who was visiting the shelter, brushed aside our attempt to ask him about the situation and his armed bodyguard tried to block the path of one fraught woman who heckled him as he walked away.
“If you’re going to come here, at least listen to us,” she plaintively shouted after him. The minister turned briefly to talk to her but whatever he said failed to pacify her.
“They’re not listening to us,” she told us. “Everyone’s just looking after themselves… we don’t have mattresses, covers or pillows… and our children are sleeping on the ground.”
Several truck-loads of provisions were brought in
Our presence at the shelter seems to rile many of those displaced. It’s not clear whether it’s because we are clearly Western, because we are media, or because they are simply just very highly stressed. Maybe all three. Tensions are high and tempers frayed.
One young mother holding a toddler on her hip told us she’d fled the bombing further south with her five children and moved north to Sidon just hours earlier.
“There’s a lot of destruction,” she said of the home she’d just left. “People died, houses got destroyed, the roads were blocked.”
She added: “There’s no more bread, no more food, no more water.”
A displaced man speaking after Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon
A young man standing next to her called Yousuf told us it wasn’t just Hezbollah fighters or supporters being targeted.
“They’re not differentiating between fighters and civilians… this aggression is intensely hitting civilian areas – they’re not differentiating at all,” he said.
As another day of Israeli bombing slipped into night, we could hear from our accommodation the regular booms of missiles hitting targets.
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Hezbollah says it will not back down and it claimed it had fired a ballistic missile for the first time at intelligence headquarters near Tel Aviv. The missile was intercepted.
We’ve heard a few Hezbollah rockets being fired over the past few days but there seems to be a marked drop in their salvoes around where we are, anyway.
The Israeli forces and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have insisted they are pressing on and the army chief has said these strikes are preparations for a possible ground assault.
Rhetoric or not, that’s a frightening prospect for the Lebanese people caught up in the thick of this bombardment.
Alex Crawford is reporting with cameraman Jake Britton, specialist producer Chris Cunningham and Lebanon producers Jihad Jineid and Sami Zein
It was in the evening that the bombing started to intensify.
Salah Jundia, his father and brothers huddled together in their home in Shujaiyya, just east of Gaza City, trying to work out what to do.
It was too risky for them to leave at night. There were a lot of them too. Extended family living across four storeys. They decided they would wait until after dawn prayers.
The explosion tore through the building just before 5am, collapsing one storey on to the next.
The aftermath of Israel’s bombing campaign in Shujaiyya, just east of Gaza City
Salah Jundia
Jundia says he survived because pieces of bedroom furniture fell on top of him.
Then he looked for his father and brothers.
“I found one of them calling for help. I removed the rubble covering him with my hands. Then I saw another brother covered in rubble but he was dead,” he told Sky News.
Jundia added: “My father was also dead. My other brother was also dead. We got them out and that is when I saw that the whole building had collapsed.”
Over the next few hours, they scrambled to rescue who they could.
An aunt and uncle and one of their children, Shaimaa. Uncle Imad and his son Mohammad. The bodies of Montasir and Mustaf.
One of the child victims of the attack on the home near the Gaza City
Another one of child victims of the attack
Jundia says he could hear cries for help, but they were coming from deep in the rubble and were impossible to reach.
The rescue teams on site – civil defence they are called – did not have the kit to clear through three floors of 500 square metres, 30cm slabs of concrete.
Rescuers drilling to try and reach the people trapped below the rubble
Efforts to free those trapped beneath the rubble near the Gaza City
In the afternoon, Jundia says Israel’s Defence Forces (IDF) told rescue teams to leave as they would be resuming their bombardment.
Jundia buried the bodies he had managed to pull out but he knew 15 of his family members, 12 of them children, were still somewhere inside the rubble, still crying for help.
He made a desperate video appeal, begging the Red Cross and Arab countries to pressure Israel to grant access to the site. It was picked up on a few social media accounts.
Israel won’t allow heavy equipment into Gaza. No diggers or bulldozers, nor the fuel or generators to run them.
They say it will fall into Hamas’s hands.
It was a major sticking point during the ceasefire and it is a major issue now as the bombardment continues, given the fact that hundreds if not thousands of civilians might survive if there were the equipment to extract them.
Members of Salah Jundia’s family left alive after the attack
Salah Jundia and his surviving family
Civil defence trying to get to the Jundia family home over the next few days were halted because the IDF were in the vicinity. A family friend tried himself and was killed.
The footage that our camera teams have shot in Shujaiyya over the past two weeks shows how civil defence teams struggle to save those who are trapped and injured with the most rudimentary of equipment – plastering trowels, sledgehammers, ropes and small drills.
“The tight siege stops civil defence equipment from getting in,” says one.
They added: “So we are taking much longer to respond to these events. Time is a factor in getting these people out. So we call immediately for the necessary equipment to be allowed in for the civil defence to use.”
The IDF say they are investigating the circumstances around the Jundia family as a result of our enquiries.
In relation to the access of heavy equipment into Gaza, they say they work closely with international aid organisations to enable the delivery of humanitarian activities in accordance with international law.
The last contact Jundia had from beneath the rubble was a phone call from his uncle Ziad, three days after the strike.
“The line was open for 25 seconds then it went dead. We don’t know what happened. We tried to call, but there was no answer,” he says.
He and his family were displaced several times before they returned home to Shujaiyya – to Rafah in the south, then Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah.
Along the way, Jundia lost one brother and a nephew to Israeli bombs.
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“We were happy and all the family came back. We went back to our house. It was damaged, but we improvised and we lived in it. We have nothing to do with the resistance. We are not interested in wars. But we have been gravely harmed,” he says.
China’s economy performed better than expected in the first quarter of the year – but it reflects a moment in time before the explosive trade war with the US, which has seen the world’s two biggest economies effectively decouple.
Economists had predicted that gross domestic product would grow by about 5.1% in January to March, compared with a year earlier. In the end, it grew 5.4%.
But these impressive figures obscure the very serious challenges China’s economy is facing in the wake of Donald Tump’s trade war – and it is almost certain growth will not remain this strong as the year goes on.
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Bobble-headed Trump explains China-US tariffs
The worst of Trump’s tariffs came into force in April, meaning they were not reflected in these figures.
In Q1, China faced an initial 10% tariff on all its exports to the US – which was then raised to 20% from 10 March.
But Beijing had planned and prepared for taxes at that level, and thus the impact was pretty minimal.
Growth was also propelled by the fact that exporters rushed to deliver orders in bulk before the tariffs came into force.
In fact, exports surged a remarkable 12% in March compared to a year earlier, a rate that will not be sustained.
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Current tariffs on goods sold from China to America stand at 145%. Trade at that price is all but impossible.
Given exports account for a fifth of China’s economy, and consumer confidence domestically is still sluggish, there will be a significant hit to come.
Experts agree China will most likely miss its annual growth target of 5% – the question is by how much.
It was in the evening that the bombing started to intensify.
Salah Jundia, his father and brothers huddled together in their home in Shujaiyya, just east of Gaza City, trying to work out what to do.
It was too risky for them to leave at night. There were a lot of them too. Extended family living across four storeys. They decided they would wait until after dawn prayers.
The explosion tore through the building just before 5am, collapsing one storey on to the next.
The remains of Salah Jundia’s home in Shujaiyya, just east of Gaza City
Salah Jundia
Jundia says he survived because pieces of bedroom furniture fell on top of him.
Then he looked for his father and brothers.
“I found one of them calling for help. I removed the rubble covering him with my hands. Then I saw another brother covered in rubble but he was dead,” he told Sky News.
Jundia added: “My father was also dead. My other brother was also dead. We got them out and that is when I saw that the whole building had collapsed.”
Over the next few hours, they scrambled to rescue who they could.
One of the child victims of the attack on the home near the Gaza City
Another one of child victims of the attack
An aunt and uncle and one of their children, Shaimaa. Uncle Imad and his son Mohammad. The bodies of Montasir and Mustaf.
Jundia says he could hear cries for help, but they were coming from deep in the rubble and were impossible to reach.
The rescue teams on site – civil defence they are called – did not have the kit to clear through three floors of 500 square metres, 30cm slabs of concrete.
Rescuers drilling to try and reach the people trapped below the rubble
Efforts to free those trapped beneath the rubble near the Gaza City
In the afternoon, Jundia says Israel’s Defence Forces (IDF) told rescue teams to leave as they would be resuming their bombardment.
Jundia buried the bodies he had managed to pull out but he knew 15 of his family members, 12 of them children, were still somewhere inside the rubble, still crying for help.
He made a desperate video appeal, begging the Red Cross and Arab countries to pressure Israel to grant access to the site. It was picked up on a few social media accounts.
Israel won’t allow heavy equipment into Gaza. No diggers or bulldozers, nor the fuel or generators to run them.
They say it will fall into Hamas’s hands.
It was a major sticking point during the ceasefire and it is a major issue now as the bombardment continues, given the fact that hundreds if not thousands of civilians might survive if there were the equipment to extract them.
Members of Salah Jundia’s family left alive after the attack
Salah Jundia and his surviving family
Civil defence trying to get to the Jundia family home over the next few days were halted because the IDF were in the vicinity. A family friend tried himself and was killed.
The footage that our camera teams have shot in Shujaiyya over the past two weeks shows how civil defence teams struggle to save those who are trapped and injured with the most rudimentary of equipment – plastering trowels, sledgehammers, ropes and small drills.
“The tight siege stops civil defence equipment from getting in,” says one.
They added: “So we are taking much longer to respond to these events. Time is a factor in getting these people out. So we call immediately for the necessary equipment to be allowed in for the civil defence to use.”
The IDF say they are investigating the circumstances around the Jundia family as a result of our enquiries.
In relation to the access of heavy equipment into Gaza, they say they work closely with international aid organisations to enable the delivery of humanitarian activities in accordance with international law.
The last contact Jundia had from beneath the rubble was a phone call from his uncle Ziad, three days after the strike.
“The line was open for 25 seconds then it went dead. We don’t know what happened. We tried to call, but there was no answer,” he says.
He and his family were displaced several times before they returned home to Shujaiyya – to Rafah in the south, then Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah.
Along the way, Jundia lost one brother and a nephew to Israeli bombs.
Read more:
Israeli air strike hits Gaza hospital
Red dye dumped into US embassy in Israel protest
Israel shot at ambulances over ‘perceived threat’
“We were happy and all the family came back. We went back to our house. It was damaged, but we improvised and we lived in it. We have nothing to do with the resistance. We are not interested in wars. But we have been gravely harmed,” he says.
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