For families who fled the Beirut area targeted in the strikes, ‘nobody has any idea what to do.’

Middle East|For families who fled the Beirut area targeted in the strikes, ‘nobody has any idea what to do.’

• Sept. 28, 2024, 5:47 a.m. ET

In Martyrs’ Square in downtown Beirut, hundreds of families from the area where the latest Israeli strikes have hit were sitting on the sidewalk after fleeing their homes in the early hours of Saturday.

“Nobody has any idea what to do,” said Zakiya Khattab, 67, a resident of the Dahiya, the Hezbollah-dominated area near Beirut where Israel carried out its latest attacks. “We would love to go back, but we can’t — it’s not safe.”

Ms. Khattab fled her house along with her son, Ayoub Merhe, 45, and his family around 1 a.m. on Saturday after the building began shaking from the Israeli airstrikes hitting the neighborhood.

They had spent the night trying to sleep on the sidewalk, his 10 children shivering from the cool sea breeze, Mr. Merhe said.

At Bahman Hospital, a Hezbollah hospital in the Dahiya, a wounded patient was being wheeled out on a stretcher, headed for another hospital. Lebanon’s health ministry has ordered hospitals in the area evacuated, and the Dahiya facility was busy as its staff members rushed to go.

“They told us to leave,” said a nurse, Maryam Chahine, who was standing outside, looking disoriented. “I don’t know where I’m supposed to go.”

Overhead, they could hear the whine of a drone. People looked up, panicking: What did it mean? Would it strike?

Members of Mr. Merhe’s family were also debating what to do while eating bits of bread they had packed from home. They did not think it was safe to return to Dahiya, but had nowhere else to go.

Still, he said they were prepared for whatever unfolded.

“We’ve lived our whole life through wars,” he said. “We’re accustomed to it.”

In some places, the Dahiya is festooned with posters and banners of Hezbollah fighters and other important figures who have been killed, including Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian commander killed in 2020 by an American airstrike on Baghdad. There are also many images of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in the neighborhood. Now he, too, may be among those whom the group and its allies call “martyrs.”