‘No place to go’: As Israel bombs Lebanon, African migrants feel abandoned

Soreti*, an Ethiopian migrant domestic worker living in Lebanon, says she feels lucky to be alive. She was not home when Israeli air strikes struck buildings in her neighbourhood in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre on September 23.

“It was a massacre,” the 34-year-old said from a private home where she and dozens of fellow African migrants, including children, are now sheltering. “They just hit apartment buildings where old people and children live. I’m OK, I think I lost some hearing, though. Children here are scared to sleep from nightmares,” she told Al Jazeera.

Soreti is among an estimated 175,000 to 200,000 foreign domestic workers living in Lebanon, the majority of them women. According to a 2019 Amnesty International report, which cited the Ministry of Labour, at least 75 percent of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon at the time were Ethiopian. They began arriving in the 1980s, and after the end of Lebanon’s civil war flocked to the country in droves throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Most take up low-paid jobs as live-in caregivers and send money to their families back home.

Israel, which has been waging a war on Gaza since October last year, escalated its attacks on Lebanon last month. Its military says the offensive is targeting facilities being used by the Lebanese group Hezbollah.

At least 1,900 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon in the last year, according to the country’s Ministry of Health.

“Everybody fled the city towards Beirut or other places where they have relatives. But for migrants, there is no place to go,” she said. “There are others sleeping outdoors with nowhere to go.”

In Lebanon’s third-largest city, Sidon, schools have been converted into makeshift shelters for displaced Lebanese, said Wubayehu Negash, another Ethiopian domestic worker who has lived there for nearly 20 years, and is considering fleeing.

“We haven’t been hit too hard yet. Nearby areas, like Nabatieh and Ghazieh were destroyed. We’re OK, but I feel uneasy about staying,” she told Al Jazeera. “I was here [since the Israelis attacked] in 2006, and this is much worse.”