MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
First, though, more than 500 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon, according to Lebanese officials. It's the worst death toll in a day of fighting there in many years.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Yesterday, Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes into almost everywhere the militant group Hezbollah has a presence, including the southern suburbs of the capital, Beirut. Tens of thousands of people fled their homes.
MARTIN: NPR's Jane Arraf was on that road and is with us now from Beirut. Good morning, Jane.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Good morning, Michel.
MARTIN: Jane, this has to be a terrifying situation. What was it like in the midst of all of this?
ARRAF: Yeah, we were inside - in south of Beirut, and as we got closer, soldiers had turned that four-lane highway going both ways into a one-way escape route north.
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ARRAF: It was bumper to bumper. Eight or nine people crammed into some cars. I saw a vegetable truck with more than a dozen children in the back. One car, there was a little girl hanging out of a sunroof, holding a stuffed doll. A couple of guys were sitting in the open trunk of another car. And we met one man who had walked and hitchhiked for the last six hours to escape the airstrikes. A businessman, Bilal Hamadi (ph), told us he and his family left after he received a call telling him to evacuate.
BILAL HAMADI: (Through interpreter) There was a message from the Israeli army on the landline in broken Arabic. They told me to leave the area. I said, thank you. What could I do?
ARRAF: Hamadi and his family were going to stay with friends in Beirut. But a lot of people had nowhere to go, and they had left so quickly, they had nothing with them. On the highway, volunteers were handing out bottles of water to passing vehicles.
MARTIN: Was there any warning?
ARRAF: Well, it's been building. Israel and Hezbollah have been trading attacks across the Lebanese-Israeli border since the war in Gaza began last October. But last week, Michel, it took an unprecedented turn. Israel detonated thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies. It had interrupted Hezbollah's supply chain and inserted explosives. Dozens of people were killed - Hezbollah fighters, but also office and medical workers and even children - 3,500 people were wounded. Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave this address.
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PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: I have a message for the people of Lebanon. Israel's war is not with you. It's with Hezbollah. For too long, Hezbollah has been using you as human shields. It placed rockets in your living rooms and missiles in your garage.
ARRAF: But Hezbollah's role in Lebanese society isn't that simple. The Iran-backed group was initially created after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to defend the country. It's much stronger than the Lebanese army, and it's really interwoven into society here in many places. It provides health care services, support to widows and orphans - things the government doesn't do.
MARTIN: So, Jane, how is Hezbollah responding to all this?
ARRAF: They seem to be scrambling. The pager attacks were a huge security breach, and an Israeli attack a couple of days later in Beirut, killing a top commander, was seen as evidence of a spy network. So Hezbollah has launched retaliatory attacks into northern Israel, which it says were aimed at military targets. But it's indicated that it has not yet avenged last week's attacks, and we don't know what form that could take. And amid all that, there are fears that Lebanon, which is already a very weak state, could collapse if there's all-out war.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Jane Arraf reporting from Beirut. Jane, thank you.
ARRAF: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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