Lebanon’s caretaker PM Najib Mikati to hold emergency cabinet session

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00:00No update out of Lebanon, no confirmation by Hezbollah.

00:03We haven't seen any statement by Hezbollah within the past 12 hours since Israel has

00:09carpet bombed that neighborhood in Beirut's southern suburb.

00:14Six buildings collapsed, and then Israel attacked with bunker buster missiles deep, penetrating

00:20deep underground, supposedly where the meeting was taking place.

00:24No comments whatsoever from Hezbollah until this moment.

00:28Also concerning is that there is a lot of uncertainty here in Lebanon, as no official

00:33has addressed the Lebanese public just yet about everything that's going on, be it the

00:38potential assassination of Hassan Nasrallah or the ongoing escalation between Hezbollah

00:43and Israel and the attacks on Beirut's southern suburb.

00:46We haven't heard any statement from the speaker of parliament, Nabih Birri.

00:51We haven't heard any statement or address to the public by the caretaker, Prime Minister

00:57on his way back to Lebanon from New York, where he was attending the UN General Assembly.

01:04We also confirm, of course, that Lebanon is in a current presidential vacuum, so there

01:08is no president in the country.

01:11So just a lot of uncertainty going on.

01:14No one is giving the Lebanese answers about anything, being the fate of Hassan Nasrallah

01:19or what's going on in terms of this escalation in Lebanon.

01:25What we know for a fact is that I spoke a while ago to the minister of environment,

01:30Nasr Yassin, who is also responsible for the emergency unit within the cabinet for what's

01:36going on in terms of war developments.

01:39He told me that the caretaker, Prime Minister Najib Mikati, will be holding an exceptional

01:43session for the cabinet at 7.30 p.m. as soon as he lands in Beirut to inform the public

01:52of what's going on and to handle the situation.

01:56According to Nasr Yassin, the official stance of the Lebanese government is they are seeking

02:01de-escalation and seeking full implementation of Resolution 1701.

02:05A lot of uncertainty here.

02:08We are waiting to see potentially how could the streets and the people, especially the

02:13supporters of Hezbollah, react if he was to be announced officially dead or assassinated

02:20by Hezbollah themselves in the next coming hours.

02:25In terms of updates on the ground, the intensity of bombardment of Beirut's southern suburbs,

02:29as we're seeing live in the footage, has somewhat decreased compared to the night hours.

02:35During the night, this place, which I was in, was shaking the entire night.

02:40We couldn't sleep at all.

02:42Right now we're seeing an airstrike or two every now and then, but it's not to be compared

02:49to what was happening overnight.

02:52We've also seen a number of airstrikes in different parts of the country, be it southern

02:56Lebanon, be it the east side of Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.

03:00Rawad, these airstrikes continuing, are people saying that they're going to remain there

03:05at home or are they going to leave their homes?

03:10Now we know for a fact that as of Monday, when Israel started intensifying its bombing

03:14of southern Lebanon, we've seen a mass evacuation of southern Lebanon.

03:18At least up until yesterday evening, 90,000 people had fled southern Lebanon and moved

03:23into evacuation centers put forth by the government in public schools in different areas.

03:29However, Beirut's southern suburb, Dahiyyik, was not evacuated earlier this week.

03:35Most of the residents were still there.

03:37So we've seen another wave of mass evacuation out of Beirut's southern suburbs in the last

03:49few hours, and overnight people walked out of Beirut's southern suburbs on foot, especially

03:56after the intensifying bombardments happened.

03:59We don't have accurate figures of the total number of people who have fled Beirut's southern

04:06suburbs overnight, but according to initial estimates, tens of thousands have fled overnight.

04:11This resulted in the caretaker government to take extra measures and opening 150 extra

04:17locations, mostly located in the north of the country, and in safer parts of Beirut

04:24to cater to all those who left Beirut's suburbs overnight.

04:28So the total estimate of the number of people who are currently displaced in Lebanon could

04:32be easily above half a million people.

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