Amna Nawaz:

Now to Lebanon, where the toll of the wider war has been severe. More than one million Lebanese are displaced. Israel has invaded the country's south again and is demanding people vacate more land.

The United Nations' top refugee official is there on a mission to survey the crisis, and he sat down earlier today with special correspondent Simona Foltyn.

Simona Foltyn:

Dr. Barham Salih, thank you very much for speaking to the "News Hour."

Barham Salih, United Nations:

Thank you.

Simona Foltyn:

Israeli bombardment on Lebanon has displaced more than a million people. That's around a fifth of the population. What has been the humanitarian impact?

Barham Salih:

It's undoubtedly very profound. This is truly a rapidly deepening humanitarian crisis.

Imagine the impact that this is causing to the entire society, to the entire country. I have visited a number of places, including shelters. And these are heart-wrenching scenes, the stories that you're told, people leaving everything behind, literally in a matter of minutes walking miles on foot to get to safety areas and so on. This is truly a humanitarian catastrophe by all standards.

And, remember, Lebanon has been a host of refugees for so long. Hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees have taken residence in this country for more than a decade. Not to mention refugees from other places in the Middle East. For Lebanon to be impacted this way, time and again, to be fair, is really very sad, very painful.

Simona Foltyn:

Doing our reporting, we have seen people sleep in their cars, sleep under tents.

Barham Salih:

Yes.

Simona Foltyn:

The schools that have been turned into displacement shelters are at capacity. What are some of the bottlenecks that the Lebanese government and the international community are facing?

Barham Salih:

To be fair, the government is doing a lot. The government is extremely challenging. It is operating in a very difficult political, as well as economic condition.

But, to be fair, this government is trying hard. I think it's incumbent upon us in the international community to help the government of Lebanon, to help the state of Lebanon. But no amount of humanitarian assistance can really deal with the scale, the scope of this crisis.

Look, nothing can replace losing your home. And many of these people have already seen their homes destroyed. And even the prospects of the returns to their communities are somewhat in doubt.

Simona Foltyn:

The Lebanese government has just issued fresh statistics saying that more than 37,000 housing units have been destroyed, many of them in Lebanon itself.

This means that, even when the fighting stops, many families won't have a place to return to.

Barham Salih:

This is a very serious problem. Many of these homes have been destroyed in the south, so these displaced people, at the end of the day, they need to go back to their homes. And the homes are already destroyed.

This is going to cause Lebanon, cause the people of Lebanon not to mention the victims themselves, a huge, huge problem.

Simona Foltyn:

More than 2,000 people have now been killed by Israeli bombardment, more than 300 on April 8 alone in what is now known as Black Wednesday. Roughly a third of that were women, children, and the elderly. Israel says it's targeting Hezbollah.

You have visited some of these strike locations. Was there anything to suggest that these buildings that were being hit were military objects?

Barham Salih:

No doubt many of the casualties are civilians, undeniably, so that the evidence speaks for itself in the sense of the word, whether Hezbollah is there or not.

At the end of the day, attacking civilians, whether in Lebanon in the way that we have seen, in Northern Israel that we have seen, these are all acts that are unacceptable and should not be happening. Targeting civilians and targeting civilian infrastructure is something that is totally unacceptable.

This violence, this conflict, this war really needs to be brought to an end, and there is no military solution to this. There has to be a political, diplomatic settlement based on security, based on respect for sovereignty and respect for the rights of the people in this part of the world.

Simona Foltyn:

Israel has maintained that it wants to keep a depopulated buffer zone in Lebanon's south. Does that concern you?

Barham Salih:

Of course it concerns me, unless these diplomatic initiatives and efforts are going to lead to a lasting security and peaceful settlement that will end these type of arrangements, because, at the end of the day, any of these areas are homes to people who have lived there forever.

And for them to leave their homes is not something that anyone can condone or accept.

Simona Foltyn:

Do you see that there is sufficient appetite on the part of international donors to support the Lebanese government? And what is the funding gap at the moment?

Barham Salih:

I think, to be fair, the United Nations has already published an appeal, a flash appeal, calling for $308 million for various U.N. agencies. UNHCR has called for about $61 million specifically targeted at Lebanon to deal with the displacement crisis.

We have been receiving some contributions. We're grateful for those, but they are nowhere near enough to deal with the scope and the scale of the problem that we have. We need more. We need more engagement. And remember also, so we're not only dealing with the displacement that is happening as a result of the last few weeks of war.

We are also dealing with large, large numbers of Syrian refugees who remain here, who have already been -- because of these events, have been displaced a year again. And so you can imagine the kind of humanitarian consequences that this is bringing to bear. And our teams are working hard at this to try to deliver the assistance needed for the people who need it.

Simona Foltyn:

Dr. Barham Salih, thank you for speaking to the "News Hour."

Barham Salih:

Thank you.

Amna Nawaz:

And late this evening in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered an expansion of the Israeli invasion of Southern Lebanon to occupy more territory and to march eastward to expand what they call a security zone along Israel's northern border.