Across southern Lebanon, thousands of families were forced to pack up their belongings and head north in cars, trucks and motorcycles as Israel struck targets it said were linked to the Lebanese Shiite armed group Hezbollah.
Some residents said they received text messages and voice recordings from the Israeli military warning them to leave areas near the Iranian-backed militia’s concentration sites.
Zahra Sawli, a student from the southern town of Nabatieh, told the BBC’s Newshour programme that Israel’s bombing of southern Lebanon was intense.
“I woke up at 6am to the sound of explosions. At noon it intensified, I saw a lot of shelling in my area. I heard a lot of breaking glass.”
Unlike many others, she and those accompanying her did not leave the house. She says they did not dare.
“Where are we supposed to go? A lot of people are still stuck on the streets. A lot of my friends are still stuck in traffic because a lot of people are trying to get away,” he explains.
At noon on Monday, The roads heading north towards Beirut were congestedwith vehicles heading toward the capital on both sides of a six-lane coastal highway.
Other images showed people walking along the beach in the southern city of Tyre as smoke could be seen rising into the sky from all the air strikes in the interior of the country.
The BBC spoke to a family of five who arrived in Beirut on a single motorbike. They had come from a village in the south and were heading to Tripoli in the north. They were exhausted.
“What do you want us to tell you? We had to flee,” the father said.
By Tuesday morning, the Lebanese Ministry of Health reported that 558 people had died and more than 1,800 had been injured. in the bombings. He added that among the At least 50 children were dead.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed to have carried out 1,100 attacks in the past 24 hours.
This included an airstrike in southern Beirut that the IDF said targeted a senior Hezbollah commander.
There was also unrest in Beirut: as people from the south arrived in the capital in cars with suitcases strapped to the roof, some of the city’s residents left.
Israel has warned people to evacuate areas where it says Hezbollah stores weapons, but also sent recorded warnings to people in Beirut districts not considered Hezbollah strongholds, including Hamra, an area home to government ministries, banks and universities.
Parents rushed to pick up their children from school after receiving further warnings to leave the area.
“They are calling everyone and threatening people on the phone. So that’s why I’m here, that’s why I came to take my son out of school. The situation is not reassuring,” Issa, a father who was taking his son out of school at the time, told Reuters news agency.
Mohammed, a Palestinian man travelling with his wife, spoke to the BBC as he left Beirut.
Asked if he would stay in the capital, he replied: “There is no safe place in Lebanon. Israel says it will bomb everything. Now they are threatening this neighbourhood, so where should we go?”
“It’s scary, I don’t know what to do: work, go home, I have no idea what to do.”
As a BBC crew set up on the side of the road, a taxi driver shouted out asking if they knew what A fuel crisis was brewing. “Too many people are coming to Beirut,” he said.
Both in Beirut and Tripoli, as well as in eastern Lebanon, by order of the government Schools have become shelters for waves of evacuees arriving from the south.
On Monday, the BBC was in a classroom at a public school in Bir Hasan, west Beirut, which was being prepared to receive people from the Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah stronghold in north-east Lebanon which Israel says was also under attack.
Classrooms were packed with mattresses but were expected to be fully occupied by the end of the day, workers said.
Meanwhile, hospitals in Lebanon were also ordered on Monday to cancel all non-priority surgeries as doctors braced for a wave of casualties.
Despite the tense and uncertain atmosphere in Beirut, some people were defiant.
“If there is a full-scale war, the Lebanese people should remain united, regardless of our political affiliations, because at the end of the day, our country is being bombed,” one man told the BBC.
Others simply resigned themselves to the violence.
“If they want war, what can we do? It has been imposed on us. We can do nothing.”Mohammed Sibai, a shop owner, told Reuters.
Mohammed, 57, from Dahieyh, a southern suburb of Beirut (Hezbollah’s main power base in the capital), told the BBC he had “survived every war since 1975” so “for me it’s normal”.
“I will not leave, I will be at home,” he said.
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