BEIRUT (AP) — Thousands of families from southern Lebanon packed cars and minivans with suitcases, mattresses, blankets and carpets. They jammed the highway heading north toward Beirut on Monday to flee the deadliest Israeli bombardment since 2006.

Some 100,000 people living near the border had already been displaced since October, when the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Israeli forces began exchanging near-daily fire against the backdrop of the war in Gaza. As the fighting intensifies, the number of evacuees is expected to rise.

In Beirut and beyond, schools were quickly repurposed to receive the newly displaced as volunteers scrambled to gather water, medicine and mattresses. In the coastal city of Sidon, people seeking shelter streamed into schools that did not yet have mattresses. Many waited on sidewalks outside.

BEIRUT (AP) – In southern Lebanon, thousands of families in cars and minivans filled with clothes, blankets and carpets were seen travelling north Beirut on Monday to escape the worst Israeli attack since 2006.

Some 100,000 people living near the border had already been displaced since October when the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah and Israeli forces increased cross-border attacks amid the bitter conflict in the Gaza Strip. The UN observed that, as the conflict escalates, the number of people fleeing the fighting zones will increase.

As it became apparent across Beirut and elsewhere, schools were rapidly being converted to accommodate the newly displaced while volunteers rushed to collect water, medicine, and mattresses. Still in Sidon, a coastal city, people sought refuge in schools that lacked mattresses. Some stood on sidewalks outside,

Ramzieh Dawi arrived with her husband and daughter after fleeing Yarine village with only some household items as airstrikes sounded.“These are the only things I brought,” she said, pointing to the three tote bags she had with her.

One such woman who arrived at the camp with three daughters from the Nabatieh region said that she and her children had been displaced twice in the same period.

“The first time, we ran for our lives to seek shelter from my brother in a nearby region, and then they attacked three locations close to his home,” she added. Some people endured being stuck in traffic for two hours or more just to get to what they thought would provide them with safety.

The United States demanded Lebanon disarm what it said was a growing Hezbollah threat, with the Israeli military advising civilians in eastern and southern Lebanon to get out before a potential expansion of the air strikes on Hezbollah’s claimed weapons locations. 

Buildings collapsed like pancaked, rubble piled up smashed cars, more than 490 people were killed in Lebanon on Monday, Officials said, and more than 1,240 people were wounded — a staggering toll for a country still reeling from a deadly attack on communication devices last week.

This attack was blamed on Israel, which has not accepted or denied responsibility for it. Israeli authorities have claimed that they are tightening the screws on Hezbollah to pressure it into cease firings rockets across the border into northern Israel to allow tens of thousands of displaced residents to reclaim their homes. 

Hezbollah also promised that they would continue fighting until there is a truce in the Gaza Strip. In the Ras al-Nabaa district of the capital, dozens of men, women, and children strolled around the playground of a large public high school, having their fingerprints scanned by volunteers.

Yahya Abu Ali, 48, also from the village of Doueir in Lebanon’s Nabatieh district, who escaped to his family, echoed the same gimmick. They told me, “Don’t think that an aeroplane or a missile will defeat us or that a wounded person or a martyr on the ground will weaken us,” he said. “On the contrary, it offers us strength, determination and perseverance”.

However, in the same way, Abu Ali said he felt concern for his four other brothers and their wives and children, who were still in the southern part of Lebanon. “If the good Lord’s willing, I surely want them to get out,” he added.

According to Minar al-Natour, a volunteer at the school, the team on the ground was still in the ‘early stages’ of preparing to accommodate the larger numbers expected.