An Australian mother and her four children were left homeless on the streets of Beirut pleading with the Albanian government to take them home after Israel launched devastating bombing raids on southern Lebanon.
Fiona Ollaik and her four children, originally from Werribee, southwest of Melbourne, narrowly escaped disaster when they realized Israel had attacked their apartment block as part of widespread attacks in southern Beirut.
They quickly fled the unit and found themselves wandering aimlessly through the streets of the Lebanese capital.
“We don’t know where to go and nothing is open,” Ollaik told 7News.
‘The children are horrified. We are terrified. We are not sleeping.
“We really want the Australian government to get us out of here as soon as possible.”
When asked about the family’s situation, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese repeated the government’s call over the past two months for Australians to leave Lebanon as soon as possible.
‘Come home. There are still business opportunities available,” Mr Albanese said.
‘What we are doing is analyzing all the measures available to us. “We repeat the call to Australians in Lebanon to return home.”
“We don’t know where to go and nothing is open,” Ollaik told 7News about his family’s situation in Beirut. ‘The children are horrified. We are terrified. We are not sleeping
It is understood, however, that exit options for those stuck in the country are limited, with few flights available at prohibitive costs.
Thousands more Australians are believed to be currently in Lebanon.
The government could be forced to organize emergency charter flights to rescue them as the conflict escalates.
Meanwhile, Australian officials are trying to help those trapped organize safe passage out and Mrs Ollaik says she and her children are “hoping for a miracle”.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that up to one million people are already displaced from their homes as a result of Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon.
The scale of Israeli army attacks increased in the second half of September after a year of low-level conflict between Israel and Hezbollah following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 last year.
Hezbollah has fired projectiles at Israel last year in a tactic designed to relieve pressure on Hamas while it was under attack in Gaza.
Rescuers search for victims after an Israeli airstrike hit two adjacent buildings, in the Ain el-Delb neighborhood, east of the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon.
Last week, a massive attack in the Dahiyeh area, a southern Lebanese suburb near a refugee camp, killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and an unknown number of civilians after knocking down several residential buildings.
In recent days, the Israeli army has launched “limited, localized and selective ground incursions” against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, in a major escalation of the conflict.
According to the country’s Ministry of Health, more than 1,000 people have died in Lebanon in the last two weeks.
In Australia, thousands of people took to the streets of Sydney and Melbourne, some waving Hezbollah flags and carrying portraits of Nasrallah in a protest widely condemned by politicians and police.