Terrified Bangladeshis flee Israeli strikes in Lebanon

Bangladeshis airlifted from Lebanon after Israeli airstrikes, fleeing fear and destruction, return home on government-backed flight.

The first Bangladeshis airlifted home after fleeing Israeli air strikes in Lebanon described the constant fear of living in a city rocked by explosions.

Late Monday (October 21, 2024), the first 54 of some 1,800 Bangladeshis wanting to escape the troubled Mediterranean nation flew back to Dhaka on a Government-backed flight.

Some gave up long-established lives in Lebanon for a deeply uncertain economic future back home.

Bangladesh's Foreign Ministry estimates between 70,000 and 100,000 of its nationals are working in Lebanon, many as labourers or as domestic workers.

For 68-year-old Abul Kashem — who lived in Lebanon's seaside capital Beirut for nearly four decades, including during past heavy fighting in the civil war — the barrage of strikes that began last month was unlike anything he had seen before.

"I have never seen any war like this," said Kashem, who worked at a gas station, before it was reduced to rubble.

“Everything around the fuel pump where I worked has been destroyed,” he said, after arriving exhausted on a plane chartered by the United Nation’s International Organisation for Migration.