"They bombed our friend.All he does is farm tobacco'

As many as 10,000 Lebanese have fled Israeli airstrikes with what little they can, admitting: We’re afraid for a big war’

- COSETTE MOLIJN & TOM WATLING

Thousands have poured into the city of Aley, about 12 miles from Beirut, after fleeing southern Lebanon where Israel has focused its airstrikes against Hezbollah.

Schools and other buildings have been turned into shelters. “Some residents even donated their apartments,” said Badr Zeidan, the district governor coordinating the efforts. The numbers escaping the bombardment keep rising, he said, but are likely to have reached 10,000. “We register them and then distribute them to schools or empty houses.”

Nasreen and her family arrived in Aley very early in the morning, having barely slept. “It took us 13 hours to get from Qana to Ghaziyeh, which usually takes less than one hour," she told The Independent. “After that, it still took us seven hours to get to Aley. We arrived at 3am.”

At first, she wanted to stay in her family home, dismissing reports of an escalation as “the same as always”. “But then they started heavily shelling the hills around us, and the bombardments came closer and closer. We smelt the bombs. Then we started to see traffic jams. My children panicked and cried, so we decided to leave.”

The journey to Beirut was exhausting. “People were panicking, we had no food or water, and we saw missiles hit villages and buildings around us when we were stuck in the traffic jam. Ambulances could not pass, it was unbearable,” she said.

The strikes from Israel – which saw Hezbollah responding with dozens of rockets – continued into yesterday, with the death toll reaching at least 558 dead and more than 1,800 injured across the two days, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, a separate authority to Hezbollah. That figure included 50 children and 94 women.