The ding of half a million phones, a pause and a collective gasp: in an instant, more than 500,000 people had been made homeless.
Shooting in the air, panicked phone calls and honking filled the streets of Beirut as people began to flee. Thousands abandoned their cars and began the slow march to the sea, desperate to escape the Israeli bombs which they knew would soon fall on their homes, whether they were in them or not.
