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

Every morning Mariam Nasereddine, from Sydney, checks for familiar names on a growing list of the dead as war intensifies in her native Lebanon Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast 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.