In the midst of Israeli bombings and with much of the country displaced, few people in Lebanon have been able to sleep through the night in recent days.
Residents told NBC News this morning of their experiences, including cheers and celebratory gunfire in the streets of Beirut after yesterday’s Iranian attack on Israel.
“We didn’t sleep all night,” Eliane Matta, a media coordinator living near the southern Beirut suburb of Dahieh, told NBC News. Instead, she said she spent the early hours on her balcony, watching as buildings burned in the distance after the blasts of airstrikes rang out. “Honestly, we are not afraid anymore. I have to stay at home, I have no other place to go to, and no other choice,” said Matta, 45.
Matta said it was also the cheers of people in the street that kept her awake, with some filling city streets to celebrate Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Israel after its escalated attacks in Lebanon, including the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Wissam Hannouch, a 35-year-old bank teller who also lives near Dahieh, said he also had “another sleepless night.”
“The evening began with the news about Iranian ballistic missiles on Tel Aviv. And then the cheerful machine gunshots streaking the night sky,” he said. Then, after hearing a “big explosion,” he too ran to his balcony, to see “a blazing ball of fire with smoke” in Dahieh.
Hannouch said he did not feel “real fear, as we know deep inside, that the bombing is aimed at very specific targets,” referencing Hezbollah, but he said he did fear for those who have been displaced by Israel’s attacks.
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