By Ahmed Kerdi
BEIRUT/SIDON, March 15 (Reuters) – Hussain Murtada and his family are camping in the back of a small truck, a flimsy tarpaulin shielding them from a storm on Sunday, with no room left at shelters for displaced people in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon.
“We are putting tarp over it because we’re soaked,” said Murtada, using string to fasten the plastic sheet over the back of the truck parked on the seafront. Inside, an infant peered out, surrounded by pillows, blankets and other possessions.
“I asked here at the schools and they are full, they’re all full,” said Murtada, who fled the town of Hanawiya, some 12 km (8 miles) from the border with Israel, with his family of seven.
“What should I ask for? I just want a shelter for me and the children,” Murtada added.
More than 800,000 people, around 15% of Lebanon’s population, have had to flee their homes since Israel began an offensive in the country after the Lebanese Hezbollah group opened fire at Israel in support of its ally Iran on March 2.
It has dragged Lebanon into the Middle East conflict just 15 months since the last Israel-Hezbollah war.
Only a fraction of the displaced – some 132,000 according to Lebanese authorities – are in collective shelters. The rest are scattered elsewhere, some with relatives, others in half-finished buildings or host communities and many in the streets.
Mohammad Marie, who fled the city of Nabatieh in southern Lebanon, has been sheltering under a tree on Beirut’s seafront Corniche, protected by a plastic sheet before it was blown away.
“It might keep raining for a week, so where will I go? I will stay here, what else can I do? I have no shelter except here, under this tree,” Marie said, his clothes soaked through.
“I don’t have a tent, I don’t have anything, and my financial situation is very difficult. I have no money to rent a house,” he said.
The United Nations launched a $308 million flash appeal on Friday to help Lebanon cope with the fallout of the war.
Israeli attacks have killed 850 people and wounded more than 2,100 others in Lebanon since March 2, including 107 children and 66 women, the Lebanese health ministry said on Sunday. Its toll does not say how many of the casualties were combatants.
Two Israeli soldiers have been killed in southern Lebanon, while no fatalities have been reported in Israel as a result of Hezbollah rocket and drone attacks since March 2.
(Reporting by Ahmed Kerdi in Beirut; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Alexander Smith)
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