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Displaced Lebanese citizens have expressed doubt that a temporary truce agreed on by Israel and Hamas will hold on Friday.
The four-day halt in fighting is expected to start at 7am local time on Friday (9am UAE time), followed by the release of some of the more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas militants on October 7, mediators in Qatar said.
But those living near Lebanon’s border with Israel are wary of the agreement remaining in place.
“There is no trust. Who should we trust, even? Israel? They are killing children, the wounded, newborns and the elderly in hospitals. Would you trust them?” asked Baker Ghrayeb, who lives in Dhayra, a village close to Lebanon’s southern border.
The village has for the past six weeks been the scene of intense cross-border fire between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel.
“I hope we can go back if the fighting stops. It’s our land, after all,” he said as children ran around a university hall that has been turned into a makeshift camp for the displaced, while others played inside large tents marked with the UN refugee agency logo.
Mr Ghrayeb fled the intense violence in Dhayra a couple of weeks ago, a village whose population has been reduced to a few dozen. He is now sheltering at the Lebanese German University in Tyre, a city in southern Lebanon spared from fighting, along with 30 families from the same village.
About 40,000 people fled the border violence, which has killed at least 107 people, among them 15 civilians, AFP reported.
On the Israeli side, six soldiers and three civilians have been killed, authorities said.
Israel and armed groups led by Hezbollah have engaged in fighting, following Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 and the retaliatory strikes on Gaza.
A Hezbollah source told The National on Wednesday that the armed group will halt its attacks on Israel when the temporary truce comes into effect in Gaza, provided Israel also pauses its attacks.
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