AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Israel says it struck weapons, storage facilities and infrastructure sites in Beirut again overnight. Over the past two weeks, the strikes which have targeted the militant group Hezbollah have also killed civilians, including children, and displaced tens of thousands from the Lebanese-Israeli border. NPR's Jane Arraf reports.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: In this square in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, local residents sit on blue plastic benches - young men sharing videos on their phones, older couples whiling away the time - all of them looking at home here. The new arrivals are different. Lebanese and Syrians fleeing airstrikes in the south - all their lives have been shattered in the space of just two weeks.
RIKAD: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: Rikad and his family arrived four days ago after attacks on the southern suburbs of Beirut. They had fled there after Israel attacked the southern city of Tyre. With fears of being targeted by Israeli forces or getting into trouble with Lebanese authorities, people here give only their first names.
RIKAD: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: "There is no safe place," Rikad tells us. "The Israelis are bombing everywhere." Just a few hours before, Israel struck a Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Tripoli, killing a commander from the militant group Hamas, along with his family. It's the furthest north Israel has struck since the Gaza war began a year ago.
RIKAD: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: The group is staying in a hotel where a Sunni politician affiliated with Hezbollah, a Shia group, is putting up displaced families.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: As Rikad speaks to us, two young children in his family ask one of their relatives if the bombs will reach them here. A while later, we meet Najwa.
NAJWA: Me and my son and my niece are coming from Dahieh.
ARRAF: She left amid a wave of attacks that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
NAJWA: Too much bomb, yes.
ARRAF: Tripoli, in better times, is a tourist destination on the Mediterranean coast. Najwa and her family can afford to rent a vacation home here, but they're no less displaced. Her niece, Yasmina, is 18 and a premed student. She started college less than a month before the attacks began.
YASMINA: I thought it would be one of the best years of my life. I've worked so much to get to the university I am in. Now, all I miss is the coffee there, my friends, studying in the library. That's all I want now.
ARRAF: As we drive back to Beirut along the coast, rocky cliffs rise up from the deep blue water. We climb rough steps carved out of the stone to a lookout point.
And that's where we find four teenage boys, legs hanging over the rock, a hundred-foot drop into the sea. In spite of everything going on, this is just incredibly peaceful - the breeze. But when we talk to them about what they've been through, it's the opposite of peaceful.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Through interpreter) We've been sitting at home for a week. We decided to come and look around because it's the first time we've seen this view.
ARRAF: They've come from the south, a very different landscape of villages nestled among rocky fields of olive groves and fruit trees. Their fathers include car dealers and travel agency owners. But the fathers have stayed behind to volunteer with emergency responder teams, now increasingly being targeted by Israel. Karim says they've lost contact with his dad.
KARIM: We can't call him since three days.
ARRAF: Saleh tells us about two friends he used to play soccer with, killed in an airstrike in the south.
SALEH: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: And he shows us a video he shot of an airstrike nearby when he was driving one of his father's delivery trucks.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: In the video, you can hear the sirens and see the smoke rising.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: Saleh has set another version to music. It's the first war these boys have lived through. They say their hearts are broken, and the music and images are the only way to express it.
SALEH: (Singing in non-English language).
ARRAF: As we climb back down, Saleh sings snippets of a folk song.
SALEH: (Singing in non-English language).
ARRAF: He's too embarrassed to sing it for us again. But it goes, whatever happens to you, my south, we will return to you.
SALEH: We love Lebanon. We love life.
ARRAF: It's both a wish and a prayer. Jane Arraf, NPR News, Ras al-Chaq'aa, Lebanon. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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