'I want to leave but I'm scared': Calgarian and her kids stuck in Lebanon as conflict rages on

Safaa went to Lebanon looking to meet with a specialist for her Crohn's disease.

Now, she and her four children are caught in the conflict between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah.

"It's pretty scary, to be honest," Safaa said.

"Mostly, it is happening at night, where you're about to fall asleep and then (a) big boom happens.

"We've had one close to us, where the house completely shook."

Safaa doesn't want her last name used for fear of being targeted.

More than 700 people have been killed in Lebanon this week, according to its health ministry.

Israel has dramatically escalated strikes, saying it is targeting Hezbollah's military capacities and senior commanders.

Safaa and her four children, all under the age of 12, have been over there for approximately a year.

They are currently situated in Taalabaya, in the central part of the country, trying to figure out what to do next.

"You read the news. They're trying to tell us to evacuate and you're trying to. We're trying to book tickets out and then the tickets get cancelled and it's only Middle East (Airlines)," Safaa said.

"We live in Lebanon. There isn't 100 planes leaving and coming."

For months, the federal government has been urging Canadians in Lebanon to leave while commercial flights are still available.

Safaa says she couldn't leave sooner since she "was in the middle of a severe Crohn's flare-up and was literally bed-bound for weeks."

She and her children have been looking at ways to get out of the country for the past 15 days.

"For me to get to the airport, I'm putting my life in jeopardy and my kids in jeopardy. Like, they just hit the Al-Dahiyeh (a suburb in the south of Beirut)," Safaa said.

"I want to leave but I'm scared to leave at the same time because I don't know what is going to happen on the way there."

Back in Calgary, her brother-in-law, Mahmoud Mourra, who is from Lebanon, is struggling to sleep at night as he watches events in his home country unfold.

"It's very hard when you're far from your cousin, from your friends, from your family, and to hear in the news over 700 airstrikes hit the region where all your family lives in and you struggle to get in contact with them to know what's going on," Mourra said.

"Especially when you learned yesterday that over 500 died."

He has lived in Calgary for 24 years but most of his family still lives in a part of Lebanon that is under attack.

For him, the recent violence brings up memories of when his brother, who was 17 years old, was killed in the 1978 South Lebanon conflict by Israeli forces.  

"If he was alive now, he'd be my old brother I look up to and there's no reason for a 17-year-old guy to die because of any conflict," Mourra said.

He has helped organize a United for Lebanon rally in Calgary on Sunday.

"Tell Calgarian citizens, there's people like you -- they eat like you, they breathe like you, they walk like you, they are not beasts, they are not savages living on the other side of the universe -- but they're not having the same hope," Mourra said.

The rally is scheduled for Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m., at city hall.