Lebanon: DCA delivers food, water, and basic support to displaced people

After a tense year of exchanging rockets and missiles back and forth across the Israel-Lebanon border, Israel launched a full-scale attack on Lebanon in September 2024. Between September and end of November airstrikes took place throughout the country and entire villages were told to evacuate towards the north of the country. On 27 November a ceasefire agreement came into effect – but a fragile one as Israel continued bombing supposed Hezbollah locations in southern Lebanon and Hezbollah kept bombing Israeli positions in the area.

Some 3,600 people have lost their lives, more than 15,000 have been injured, and one million people have been forced to leave their homes. That is one in five of the population. This also included many of DCA’s staff whose homes are in the Southern part of the country which has been most severely affected.

In response to these needs, DCA converted all activities to support for the many civilians who found themselves sleeping in the open, in schools, or other spaces made available to them – to ensure they had food, water, mattresses, blankets, and other necessities.

This work continues in the relative calm of the ceasefire and DCA is preparing to focus its efforts into clearing areas contaminated by explosive remnants of war as a result of the recent hostilities – to ensure that people who are displaced can return safely to their homes.