Thirteen-year-old Alaa and his family — mother, father and two sisters — survived the blast and fled to Lebanon. Today, Alaa is a hairdresser in Beirut and worries about having to go through another war as tensions rise between the Lebanese group Hezbollah and Israel. I live day by day. Alaa is one of millions of refugees and migrants who have found a haven in Lebanon, far from their war-torn homelands. Most keep a low profile and try to eke out a meagre living. Several Syrian and Sudanese nationals told Al Jazeera they are aware that Lebanon could soon be the theatre of a wider conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
But while many seem resigned about the future. Regional tensions escalated after Israel assassinated senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shakr on July 30 in Dahiya, a bustling residential neighbourhood in Beirut. Israel neither denied nor claimed responsibility for the assassinations, but United States officials and Iran said Israel was behind the attacks.
The assassinations cast a dark cloud over Lebanon and its inhabitants, including the Syrians and Sudanese nationals seeking refuge there. Since then, Israel has stepped up airstrikes on southern Lebanon, leading to a spike in civilian causalities. Most recently, on August 17, an Israeli airstrike killed ten Syrians and injured a Sudanese citizen in Nabatiyeh, a town in south Lebanon. Bakhri Yousef, a year-old Sudanese national, worries that the war may soon reach Beirut.
Since , he has worked as a cleaner so he can send his family a couple of hundred dollars a month via an informal money transfer system. They need this money to survive, he says, and it is the only reason he stays in Lebanon.
His family lives precariously in el-Obeid, Sudan, a city controlled by the Sudanese army but under siege by the Rapid Support Forces RSF paramilitary as the two sides engage in a war to control the country. But in Sudan, I can rely on my family and they can rely on me.
