‘You feel utterly helpless’: Lebanese Australians watch in despair as Israeli bombardment forces families to flee

‘Every single moment of that terrifying ongoing attack on Lebanon is just eating me up,’ says Mariam Nasereddine, whose friends, family, in-laws and colleagues in Lebanon have been forced to flee in the path of Israeli strikes. Photograph: Rémi Chauvin/The Guardian

It was the first time Mariam Nasereddine had seen her friend’s newborn twins. The pair, just four days old, were lying in a plastic bread crate – a makeshift cot their mother had created.

For weeks, the family has been sleeping on the floor in a school classroom in Mount Lebanon, filled with other families displaced by Israel’s attacks on the country.