Beirut besieged Airstrikes disrupt universities, shops and daily life in the capital

As a powerful barrage of Israeli airstrikes pummelled Beirut's southern suburbs overnight, cousins Nader Ismail and Lyne Nassar sat on a balcony in nearby Baabda overwhelmed with shock.

- Ruth Michaelson

"It felt like we could feel the pressure waves from the bombings washing over us," said Nassar. "The windows shook; the whole building shook. It was traumatising."

The 21-year-old medical student and her family first fled Beirut's southern suburbs for the town of Aley in the mountains around the capital in late August, initially as a precaution. Ismail, 20, and his family joined them for the second time 10 days ago, fleeing the bombardments striking the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahiyeh and driving out residents to other parts of the city and surrounding areas.

The cousins said the family home in the mountains is so full of people that they decided to take a break at the apartment in Baabda, even though it is closer to the airstrikes, but the intense wave of attacks that sent columns of smoke and fire into the sky overnight forced them back to Aley.

The sense of a new reality was compounded yesterday when Lebanon's education minister Abbas Halabi further delayed the start date for the public school year to 4 November, citing "security risks" from the Israeli airstrikes.

Public school buildings across the country have now been converted into makeshift shelters housing more than a million displaced from southern Lebanon and Beirut. UN officials said late last week that almost 900 of the shelters are full.