“We of course would make an appeal not only for the bombings in general to stop but also of course to avoid bombing people who are trying to flee.”

Mr. Vargas Llosa described “large numbers of people” returning to Syria, a reference to some of Lebanon’s approximately 1.5 million Syrians who have fled their country’s civil war since 2011. “The estimate is that this figure is now well over 30,000 with about 75-80 per cent of those Syrians and the other 20 per cent or so Lebanese,” the UNHCR official said.

Young lives lost

“We have seen quite a few injured arriving; people who have been injured not only through the very arduous journey on the way here, but also injured as a direct result of the bombings in Lebanon.

“We saw a woman crossing with two dead children from Lebanon who were to be buried here in Syria.”

Back in Lebanon, UN humanitarians continue to provide aid coordination to assist the Lebanese government. Nearly 500 shelters have been opened for around 80,000 displaced people, including 300 schools that have been repurposed, impacting the education of over 100,000 students.

But “critical funding gaps” persist in many areas, including shelter repair, site management, food stocks, fuel and coordination, Mr. Riza said, before warning that Lebanon’s health system has been “completely overwhelmed” by the serious escalation in hostilities.

“We have done a great deal of preparedness work and luckily we have managed to get trauma kits and the like in and tried to have them distributed also throughout the country because now the displacement is happening not just in south,” he explained.

“For the first 11 months it was mainly the south - it was mainly the Bekaa [Valley]... But now it’s throughout the country.”