Safe places needed for those displaced in Lebanon, official says

The International Organization for Migration’s regional director said Thursday that the “support provided so far is minimal” for the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the Israeli aerial and ground offensive in Lebanon.

There is an “urgent need for help to identify safe places that are able to host people, because from our field visits, most of the places are overwhelmed,” Othman Belbeisi said during a visit to the country.

The Lebanese government has said that some 1.2 million people have been displaced by the conflict, of which Belbeisi said the IOM has been able to verify 690,000, a number that is expected to grow.

While hundreds of thousands have fled across the border into neighboring Syria, Belbeisi said that thus far the organization has not tracked a major surge in the number of people attempting to flee to other countries by sea, possibly because such journeys would involve a “very high risk with the current situation.”