Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, says that he will meet donor countries to pursue more funding for Lebanon’s burgeoning displacement crisis as hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing Israel’s expanding aerial campaign.

“We are trying as much as possible to fill the gaps; as I said yesterday, it is not an easy process,” Mikati said, announcing that he would ask donors on Tuesday to give money to Lebanon through the UN. Caretaker minister of the environment and head of the government’s crisis cell, Nasser Yassin, said donors were expected to pledge more than $450m (£336m).

Yassin said this should cover the “immediate needs” of Lebanon’s brewing humanitarian crisis. However, he noted that more would likely be needed after the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel abates to rebuild. Lebanon’s southern council has reported damages of over $1.7bn, though that was before Israel’s intense bombing campaign that started two weeks ago.

Israeli warplanes continued to pound southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and parts of Beirut, creating successive waves of internal displacement. Approximately 115,000 people are living in state-run shelters, the Lebanese Council of Ministers reports, but accurate numbers of displaced peoples are likely much higher.

More than 77,000 Lebanese and Syrians fled to Syria in the last five days, according to Lebanon’s general security directorate, which announced on Sunday that thousands of people were scattered throughout public parks and streets because they had nowhere else to go.

Sheltered homeless people, sleeping rough on the streets of Beirut, with no services provided to them since they were displaced on Friday night. Hezbollah’s acting leader, Naim Qassem, vowed Monday in a speech that his group will continue waging war against Israel. Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said his country would “use all the capabilities we have” against Hezbollah.

The target region, Cola, was an intersection where buses and cabs were always congregating every morning, so it was not known to be Hezbollah-friendly. There were killed two military and security commanders as well as a third member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. 

This guerrilla group had taken part in several famous hijackings of aircraft during the 1970s. On Monday afternoon, debris still lay at the foot of the apartment building, and onlookers gathered around a cordoned-off area patrolled by Lebanese special forces.

Israel isn’t thinking of a certain sect, religion, or area. Wherever they want to kill someone, they’ll kill them; there won’t ever be peace, said Mohammed, 28, a computer scientist, who was lightly injured when the airstrike brought down a wall in his apartment.

An Israeli airstrike on Sunday killed 45 people in the town of Qraiyeh, east of the southern Lebanese city of Sidon. According to Wassim Jabour, an employee in the Qraiyeh municipality, “There are so many dead and wounded, it was truly a massacre. And they all still trying to clear the rubble, there are entire families still missing”.

Two weeks ago, Israel declared its intention to allow back to their homes about 60,000 residents of northern Israel displaced by Hezbollah rocket attacks since 8 October last year.

 Since then, it has pounded Lebanon with airstrikes, killing over 700, touched off an attack using rigged pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah that killed at least 37, including some children, and injured nearly 3,000, and called up reserve troops to its border with Lebanon.

Since fighting between Israel and Hezbollah began on 8 October, more than 1,600 people have been killed in Lebanon and more than 8,400 wounded. Hezbollah attacks during the same period have killed 50 Israelis.