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Few signs of life can be seen along the highway in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon. Nearly every shop lining the road is shuttered and the sidewalks empty. The red-and-white painted barriers of some Lebanese army checkpoints are vacant, abandoned by the soldiers guarding them. Even the road is mostly quiet — save the occasional car racing out of the valley.
Scattered along the way are remnants of the Israeli airstrikes that have pummeled the area in recent days. Where factories, stores and houses once stood, there are piles of cinder blocks, twisted pieces of metal and shards of glass. Emerald green shrubbery is coated in dull gray dust, and power lines — yanked from their metal posts in the blasts — dangle over the road, swaying with the breeze.
“Every strike feels closer and closer and closer. You don’t know where to hide, where to escape,” said Mariam Saleh, 23, who was visiting relatives in the Bekaa Valley village of Britel when the strikes began this week.
The bombardments across the Bekaa Valley are part of the more than 1,000 airstrikes that Israel has launched against Lebanon since Monday in an attempt to weaken Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese military group. The campaign is one of the most intense in contemporary warfare, experts say, and led to the deadliest day in Lebanon in decades.
So far, about 700 people have been killed and over 100,000 others forced to flee their homes because of the strikes.
While the heaviest bombardment has been in the south, Israel has also struck across the Bekaa Valley, a patchwork of farmland, wineries, olive groves and villages nestled between Lebanon’s two mountain ranges. At least 160 people have been killed in Bekaa over the past week, according to the local authorities.
The strikes have decimated pockets of the valley, one of Lebanon’s poorest regions, where Hezbollah holds immense sway and has a significant support base. Thousands of residents have fled the area since the strikes began on Monday, seeking shelter in relatives’ homes in the capital, Beirut, or crowding into hotels on its outskirts. By Wednesday, nearly all of the hotels in Chtoura — a major town on the western edge of Bekaa — were fully booked.
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The map locates the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, and the villages of Baalbek, Douris, Britel, Khodor, and Chtoura within the valley.
Mediterranean
Sea
BEKAA
VALLEY
Baalbek
Douris
Britel
Beirut
Khodor
Chtoura
LEBANON
Damascus
SYRIA
GOLAN
HEIGHTS
ISRAEL
20 miles
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