A report from the border of Lebanon and Syria

From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am when Hesbola's leader has Sonsrala was killed in Beirut over the weekend. Michelle de Massi felt the blast from her apartment. Michelle's an Australian journalist and she's been in the city for a few months working there. Now as Israeli a Strax continue, She's preparing to leave Lebanon, likely by plane, but for a million people who could be forced to flee their homes, that calculation of where to go and

Yeah, right now, the situation's pretty tense.

Everyone's really quite panicked and worried about what is going to happen. Many people are fleeing the country at the moment. So overall the situation is it's pretty dire. It's one of the largest mass displacements that Lebanon's ever seen.

And so when you talk to people in Beirut right now, what is the tone of those conversations and what's the feeling.

So most people are saying they're very, very afraid right now. They don't know what the future holds. People have really bad memories of what happened in two and six when there was a ground invasion in the south of Lebanon. But after the pager attacks that happened a week and a half ago, people quite traumatized from that as well. You know, that was something that had never ever happened before in Lebanon and anywhere in the world.

So I think the.

Unpredictability of the situation is adding to a lot of the panic. And not to mention that on Friday night, Hesbela's leader, Hassan Astrala, was assassinated. Hasbala has confirmed the death of its leader, Hassan Israela.

It's like reverberated through all of the city.

And when that happened, you know, I was even here in my apartment, I could feel that the whole house shook and we all ran outside. When I got outside, I could see all my neighbors on the balcony and everyone was just thinking what has happened?

And last week the Australian government told Australians in Lebanon to leave. So I would again say to any Australian and none, please leave, Please leave by whatever means are available, whilst they route airport is still open. Can you walk me through what their advice was and what help is being offered.

Yeah, so there's over fifteen thousand Australians here in Lebanon, so the first advice was please leave while there are commercial airlines accessible to Lea And then what we've seen now is, you know, over thirty airlines have actually canceled operations here. So really all that's left is a local carrier, Middle Eastern Airlines, and the flights are completely booked out.

We're not at a point yet.

Where there's evacuation flights taking place. And also the other advice was try to take a ferry. There's a fairy leaving from Tripoli and Lebanon to Turkey as another means of transportation. But the advice is very clear right now to leave the country while the airport is still open.

And so what does all of that mean for you, Michelle, what are you planning on doing.

Yeah, look, I've been here as a journalist all summer. For me as well, I think it's time to leave this week. I'm making my own plans to accept the country as well. You know, it's a really sad situation to be in.

And you know, I'm someone.

Who is privileged enough that I can leave, but you know, right now there is thousands of Lebanese people that cannot leave, and Lebanon is home to over one and a half million Syrian refugees as well. So you know, these are people that cannot necessarily easily leave the country, But for me, as a Westerner, I will make plans to leave very soon.

After the break.

Michelle takes us to the border where thousands of Syrian refugees are fleeing back into Syria. Michelle, in the last couple of days, you've been at the Lebanon Syria border speaking with people who are trying to get out of Lebanon. Can you tell me about your journey there?

Yes, So, the.

Journey from Bainbrute to the border, it's a border town called Masna, took me about one and a half hour's drive.

On that day.

Cars were banked up for you know, in very very long queues. People were waiting for hours, if not into days to cross into the border. So it's extremely chaotic. There was a sense of you know, panic and anxiety in the air about what was going to happen. People didn't want to leave, but you know, it was just a mass migration of people. Over thirty thousand people have crossed into that border at the moment.

People were going with their very few belongings.

That they had, and yeah, UNHCR has stated that eighty percent of them are Syrians, so Syrian refugees that are returning, which is the first time we've seen this reverse flow of migration back into Syria since the war there, and around twenty percent are Lebanese.

So when I was there, it was.

A case of basically two two border crossings. Right. There was a formal one which Lebanese were able to go through with their passports, and then for Syrians, many of them don't have passports, they're undocumented, so what they were doing they couldn't actually go through the legal way of the crossing. They were using an irregular route. People were basically paying I would say, you know, a smuggler of sorts to transport their belongings in cars who were going through.

And what did they say to you when you asked them about their situation at the moment.

So there was a mixture of Syrians and Lebanese people there that I did meet. I spoke to one Palestinian man, a man called Najib, and he was there with his young family. He'd escaped the bombings in a tier that had taken place, and he actually was a Palestine and refugee that had been living in Syria and then he had fled the Syrian war and had come to Lebanon, and now he was actually having to flee back to Syria. He was saying, you know, we we want to live,

Children, had my name in Dagospa.

She'd come from Balbach, which had also experienced bombardments, and she said that was bombing going on all around her homes. So she'd taken her five kids across the border. And she was saying that she was hoping that the war would only go for two weeks, but she said she didn't know what was going to happen, and her life was really quite unstable right now.

And so can you tell me a bit more than for those who are unable to leave Lebanon right now? What is life like at the moment?

Yeah, so right now, if you go, you know, walk down to downtown bea route, you will see a lot of people sleeping in in the parks on the people have got pieces of styrofoam that they're using, as you know, makeshift beds and shelters, so there's really nowhere to go.

People are sleeping in their cars and.

Across the country right now, most of the schools are closed, so the schools have actually had to convert into emergency shelters. The other day, I went to one of the emergency shelter schools in Burhassan here in Beirute, and many Lebanese had come out to volunteer. I started yesterday and I spent like five hours here.

Yeah maybe more like you more than that.

Yeah, they needed an extra hand, so I'm helping out. I think people are actually wanting to keep busy right now because of just the stress and the worry. So at the emergency shelter, I spoke to Lebanese people, including women and even young teenage girls who were all in the kitchen cooking that were preparing like over two thousand meals a day to go out to this school. It was people sheltering the school, and yeah, there was volunteers

To stay in. So, you know, in amongst.

What is a really pretty sad backdrop, there's people that are actually trying to make a difference here and do whatever they can support other people that have been displaced.

I'm feeling good that I'm being able to help and helpfully things will get better. So, like, we have high hostage life.

And last week the idea so that it was preparing for a possible ground invasion of Lebanon. So how is the country preparing for that possibility.

Well, right now we have a caretaker government, so that's actually probably made things a lot more complicated. After the pager attacks and this ongoing bombardments. You know, hospitals are already at full capacity, so this is really really concerning as to how they would be able to manage more mass casualties. So, you know, it's really unclear how they're

We haven't seen that before. This is the first time it's happened, and.

People are hearing that the Israeli troops are on the border right now in the south and that it's likely that a ground invasion will happen. So this is really causing a lot of distress for people.

Well, thank you for taking the time to talk to me, and yeah, I wish you the best for the next few days and weeks.

Thanks so much. Ruby, it's nice to speak with you as well. Thank you.

Also in the news today, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has threatened to cancel the visas of anyone in citing discord in the community. The comments come after protests across Australia against Israeli attacks on Lebanon, where small groups of people in attendance carried Hezbola flags. The Federal Opposition is calling for police to charge anyone identified to be holding the Hesbola flag. And the manjailed for kidnapping a four year old girl from a campsite in Western Australia has

See tomorrow Man.