Lebanonis a nation that's no stranger to war, but this conflict feels different.
Just 18 months ago, Israeli bombs rained down across the country for weeks. Intent on defanging the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah and uprooting it from its strongholds, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) invaded the country's south.
Now, the country is wracked by the terror of a new, heavier bombardment, with more than 1,000 dead since March 2, when Hezbollah fired projectiles into Israel to avenge the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, sparking Israeli retaliation.
In the capital Beirut, walls bear the scars of conflicts past. Although much of the city lives under an uneasy calm, the conflict is impossible to miss.
"I keep thinking it's traffic," one taxi driver told CNN. "And then I remember it's all the parked cars."
Along nearly every major road in central Beirut, cars shelter families displaced by war, turning normally gridlocked lanes into impromptu camps for desperate people.
In the southern village of Irkay, CNN attended the funeral of five children aged between six and 13, killed in a single strike on their grandparents' house.
Both grandparents died in the blast – which flattened the house – as well as two uncles, one of whom was in a house across the street.
The relatives were laid to rest as Israeli strikes blasted in the background. "May God destroy you, Israel!" yelled one woman in the congregation.
There was no sign that the destroyed house had been used for military purposes.
Just over 100 children died in the 2024 conflict, according to UNICEF figures, a number that has already been topped during Israel's ongoing strikes.
The Israeli military has killed at least 111 children since the war began, according to Lebanese health ministry figures – a death toll that has raised questions about the number of child or other civilian casualties that the IDF is willing to accept when prosecuting airstrikes.
But IDF international spokesperson Nadav Shoshani put the blame for the civilian losses on Hezbollah.
"We have a terror organization who have a strategy to put our civilians in the line of fire and their civilians in the line of fire. We're doing everything we can to avoid that," he told CNN.
"We've seen it with Gaza, there's a heavy price of war – it doesn't mean that one side or the stronger side is conducting it in the wrong way."
Mohammed Rida Taqi, father of four of the killed children, who was also hurt in the attack, said there was no Hezbollah presence at the home.
"Were there any Hezbollah martyrs?" he asked. "We're a family."
"The people of the south do not bow down," he added. "Not to Israel and not to America, which is supporting them with weapons."
While strikes are generally preceded by alerts from the IDF, there was no warning for the blast that struck at the heart of Irkay.
"It feels like we're living our whole lives waiting for that post or that message or that WhatsApp forwarded message that says 'Alert,'" Kim Moawad, 38, told CNN from Beirut.
"Then you're all worked up," she said. "You're almost disappointed if there's no strike because you're just waiting for it."
"You weirdly feel comforted when they strike because you feel like, okay, it's over."
Advertisement
The precision of some assassination strikes in Beirut – often hitting a single window without warning – has added a new psychological terror to the conflict. These strikes have become a staple of this round of fighting, with no apparent limits: central Beirut, Christian neighborhoods, even near IDP tents of displaced people, have all come under fire.
After watching the utter devastation wrought by Israel on Gaza, with much of the Palestinian territory transformed into an uninhabitable moonscape, many in Lebanon fear the IDF has similar plans for their country.
"Lebanon used to be prosperous. But now Lebanon is destroyed; there is no Lebanon anymore," grandmother Sanaa Ghosn told CNN at a Beirut shelter for displaced people.
"Hopefully what happened in Gaza won't happen to us."
Israeli rhetoric has only inflamed those anxieties.
"The southern suburbs will become like Khan Younis," Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in early March, referencing the Gaza city largely reduced to rubble in the Israeli campaign.
Tearing society's fabric
The influx of 1 million displaced people has strained relations locally with the communities that welcomed their compatriots.
CNN heard stories from multiple displaced families of landlords questioning them on their family names or how they looked – questions they believed were designed to root out Shiite renters, who may have links to Shiite Muslim Hezbollah.
The United Nations haschartedspikes in online attacks on internally displaced people around these assassination strikes, with some sectarian cracks beginning to show. It has also tracked similar calls by prominent Lebanese.
"There is a risk that this initial shock will turn into anger, frustration and potentially tensions between communities," Karolina Lindholm Billing, representative of the UN refugee agency in Lebanon, told CNN in a Beirut school sheltering displaced families. The shelter, in the Sin El-Fil area of the capital, houses some 170 families, and filled to capacity within an hour of opening on the night the war started.
Lindholm Billing said that many displaced people had not had the chance to properly rebuild or recover after the last war. According to the UN, some 13% of displaced persons returned to the shelters that housed them in 2024.
Shifting opinions
While the 2024 war saw relative unity in Lebanon behind Hezbollah's clashes with the IDF – feelings driven by anger at the war in Gaza – this latest conflict has seen emboldened opposition to the armed group.
With the government promising to crack down on Hezbollah's arsenal, there was tangible support for that on the streets, at least in the early days of the IDF strikes.
"Young men, children, and babies are dying. I mean, there was no need to get into this war. And then they're saying that they're supporting Iran. I mean, what's that got to do with us?" mechanic Sako Demirjiane told CNN in an ethnically mixed neighborhood of Beirut.
"We saw before, the support was for Gaza, and we saw what it brought us. And now they are supporting Iran too, and we saw what it brought us," he said. "It's unliveable here."
This all comes as international aid organizations weather brutal cuts to their budgets, after the US government under President Donald Trump slashed its contributions.
"I've worked almost 30 years for UNHCR and I don't want to sound alarmist, but I can't remember having been as concerned and worried about the situation as this," Lindholm Billing said, using the formal name of the UN refugee agency.
Hand to mouth
Along Beirut's waterfront, lines of tents have appeared, each sheltering a family.
"I've never seen it like this," one volunteer, Samr Zahwi, who was leading a team offering evening iftar meals to those breaking their Ramadan fast, told CNN. Some had come from the city's southern suburbs – areas with close ties to Hezbollah – and others from across the country's south.
The newest residents of some of the city's most expensive real estate pitched their shelters in the shadow of the port where, in 2020, a massive blast rocked most of Beirut, killing hundreds and destroying a chunk of the capital.
In Lebanon, trauma piles on trauma.
Additional reporting by Lisa Courbebaisse and Elina Baudier Kim.
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account atCNN.com
