Students sit outside of their school, playing cards, after their classes were canceled at Beirut Arab University, on the outskirts of Beirut's southern suburbs. (Photo sent by a BAU student to L'Orient Today)
The school day started out relatively normally — as normal as can be after a week like the last. But, by early afternoon, thousands of students had been sent home, classes canceled, and schools transformed into shelters for people fleeing a rage of Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon and the Bekaa — around 800, as the day draws on — and eventually a strike on Beirut's southern suburbs.
"Today was very dramatic," says Malak Hamdan, a sixth-grade student in Beirut. He tells L'Orient Today that many of his classmates didn't show up and that the younger grades' classes were almost empty. "We just hung out in class all day talking because our teacher was too stressed to teach us," he says, "and then my dad left work and came and picked me up."
"It wasn't scary," he insists. "But I'm scared of what could happen and I don't want to die."
By late Monday evening, Israel's bombing campaign had killed at least 356 people and injured 1,246 more, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health. Twenty-four children and 42 women were among those who were killed.
The speed of escalation prompted caretaker Education Minister Abbas Halabi to order schools, technical colleges and universities in the southern suburbs of Beirut, southern Lebanon and the Bekaa to close their doors. In southern Lebanon, many schools did not wait for the minister's decision before calling in parents to come collect their children.
Outside of the Beirut Arab University, students whose classes had been cut short sit on the sidewalk, playing cards. But not everyone is feeling so apparently nonchalant. At Rawdah High School, located along the main road leading to the Beirut airport, Dareen Hammoud is stuck waiting for her mother to come and get her. But traffic is heavy and the roads are clogged.
"Can Israel just stop!" Dareen says, panicked. "This morning, my biggest fear was a chemistry exam that I had to study for and now I'm worried that I'm going to die."
Adding to the panic felt across Lebanon as Israeli jets cut through Lebanese skies, around 80,000 people received suspicious phone calls telling them to evacuate their homes and offices. Even the Ministry of Information received a call from someone speaking Arabic "with an American accent" saying its offices in Hamra were a target.
At the mall
At first glance, the scene looks relatively calm at Beirut's City Center Mall. People walk around, dangling shopping bags and sipping coffee. But on a closer look, people are glued to their phones. The mall administration has advised its various stores to "continue operating normally," but some employees in some stores are allowed to use their phones "to check up on their families" says a man working at Bershka, speaking anonymously, since he's not authorized to engage with the press during working hours.
At the Batta shoe store, a woman is on the phone with her mother, who can be heard crying on the other end of the line. She's begging her daughter to leave the mall and come home, but her daughter keeps insisting: "I can't leave."
Six-year-old Peter is sitting with his mother at Burger King. "I just wanted him to have a sense of normalcy for the time being," she says. When his school announced it was closing early for the day, she decided to bring him for lunch at the mall instead.
Saniyah Germanos appears lighthearted about the situation, but not in denial. "I'm here only to window shop," she says with a laugh. "I won't be spending money; I'm preparing myself for the worst."
Twenty minutes later, the air has shifted and some people are leaving the mall running.
All day, in southern Lebanon and in Beirut's southern suburbs, young men from Hezbollah have been going door-to-door telling people to leave their homes and find somewhere safer.