Lebanon has set up 441 makeshift shelters hosting about 97,000 people who fled to safer parts of the country, Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported, adding that at least several hundred thousand people are internally displaced nationwide.
“These are people who left their homes in a hurry, who have no kitchen, cannot cook anything,” Caritas Polska’s Dominik Derlicki said.
“First, we deliver food — either hot meals or food parcels. Next, we will deliver basic necessities such as hygiene kits, mattresses and blankets. Caritas Polska has already allocated USD 100,000 for this purpose,” he said.
Caritas Polska has also included displaced people in its “Family to Family” program, which it has run in Lebanon for five years, providing monthly financial support to poor Lebanese families for urgent needs such as medicine, food or bills. The program also supported internally displaced people during the previous war that ended with a ceasefire in November 2024.
Since Monday, March 2, when Hezbollah joined the Israeli-U.S.-Iran war, the Israeli army has been bombing Lebanon. Israel has called on residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs and those living between the Israeli border and the Litani River to leave their homes.
The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said that since Feb. 28 more than 84,000 people in Lebanon had found shelter in nearly 400 special centers, while more than 30,000 people — mainly Syrians and Lebanese — had crossed into Syria.
Polish Press Agency (PAP) cited the United Nations as saying more than 330,000 people had been forced to leave their homes due to fighting on the Afghan-Pakistani border and in the Middle East, and that 56 civilians, including 24 children, were killed in clashes last week between Afghan forces and Pakistan’s army.
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Source: Polish Radio, PAP