"To lose a child would be like [having] a piece of your heart ripped out," Hoda Hannaway says when speaking about her 10-year-old nephew who was killed by a recent Israeli air strike in southern Beirut.

The ex-Master Chef contestant from Sydney said she was "deeply saddened" when she learned of his death in a family group chat.

"No child should experience a full-scale war let alone live in constant terrorising fear," she told the ABC.

Waiting to hear back from loved ones has been like "living on the edge".

It's a feeling echoed among the Lebanese Australian community — an estimated 250,000 people.

Devastated for her nephew and her family, she said she could not imagine what they were going through. 

Her family has been displaced while escaping "relentless" bombing in southern Beirut and the nation's south.

"My family in Lebanon are both mourning my nephew's loss and at the same time fearful for their own lives as well as their families' lives too," she said.

More than 1.2 million people in the country have been displaced, living on the streets or in schools that have turned into shelters, Lebanon's caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikatir said.

At least 28 water facilities have been damaged, as have several schools, at least 15 hospitals, and 70 primary healthcare centres and emergency medical services, according to UNICEF Lebanon Representative Edouard Beigbeder, who said: "Above all else, the children of Lebanon need a ceasefire."

The death toll in Lebanon from Israel's bombing has climbed to more than 2,653, with thousands more injured, and others still missing under the rubble, according to the Lebanese health ministry. 

Israel says about 60,000 of its citizens have been evacuated from its country's north as the Israeli military and Hezbollah trade fire.

The United Nations recently criticised the destruction of civilian property in Beirut after Israel said it was targeting Hezbollah's financial arm.

Hezbollah first fired rockets at Israeli forces in support of Gaza, according to the group's since-slain leader Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, after the Israel-Gaza war erupted on October 7 last year.

It followed Hamas launching a surprise attack in southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking about another 250 hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

In response, Israel launched air strikes and invaded Gaza in a war that to date has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians and injured tens of thousands more, according to the Gaza health ministry. 

Lebanese Shiite community in mourning

Australia's Lebanese Shiite Muslims — one of the major two sects of Islam — have been deeply affected by the bombing in Lebanon as their families originate from south Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley and Beirut.

Ms Hannaway said she felt completely "helpless" watching it unfold from afar.

"Not being able to offer them physical help, my heart breaks over and over every single day," she said.

Australian National University Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies director Karima Laachir said this feeling would be common among some in the Lebanese diaspora.

Professor Laachir said Hezbollah, which has a military and political wing, has a deep history in Lebanon that makes it part of the country's political and social fabric.

Hezbollah in its entirety has been listed as a proscribed terrorist organisation in Australia since 2021.

Previously, the Australian government only listed parts of the group's military wing in June 2003.

Professor Laachir said the group has held cabinet positions since 2005. 

In the most recent national elections, in 2022, Hezbollah maintained its 13 seats in Lebanon's 128-member parliament. 

According to the government's national security website, as of 10 September 2021, it holds two cabinet positions in the Lebanese government.

'They're trying to stay alive'

At the beginning, Ms Hannaway said she was frustrated that Israel's attacks were not being condemned by the West.

Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said Australia was "deeply concerned by the escalation of conflict".

"Lebanese civilians cannot be made to pay the price of defeating Hezbollah, and Lebanon cannot become the next Gaza," Senator Wong said.

After a meeting with other EU leaders at a summit in Brussels, French President Emmanuel Macron urged Israel to halt military operations in Lebanon, respect its sovereignty, and avoid expanding the conflict.

Former NSW Liberal deputy mayor Hassan Awada had similar feelings.

He just found out that nine of his relatives were killed by recent air strikes in south Lebanon.

He was devastated by the news. His other family members have been displaced.

"I don't know what their future holds. They're trying to just stay alive," Mr Awada said.

He questioned why nobody had intervened with Israel's bombing of Lebanon and subsequent invasion in its south. 

"As a country in Australia, we're very big on human rights and international law and so on," he said.Mr Awada, who lived in Lebanon until he was 22, said he felt these recent attacks on the south "on a personal level".

"I lived through the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and also the occupation of south Lebanon and the brutality of Israel's occupation," he said.

He said he watched dozens of friends and family get killed during those wars.

'No rockets underneath their houses'Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the people of Lebanon that the war is not with them but with Hezbollah.

In an address to the United Nations on September 27 this year, he accused Hezbollah of putting a "missile in every kitchen" of the Lebanese people and a "rocket in every garage".

Sydney resident Battoul said she lost several family members and friends in Israel's attacks on Lebanon's east, in Baalbeck, and in south Lebanon.

"There were no rockets underneath their houses, like [Israel's prime minister] said," she said.

Israel maintains it has only targeted Hezbollah members and infrastructure.

Professor Laachir said Mr Netanyahu's comments at the UN were questionable, given the ongoing death of civilians in Gaza. 

In a new report, a UN independent international commission of inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories said Israel had perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza's healthcare system and committed war crimes with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.

It found that Israeli security forces had "deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles". 

"These actions constitute the war crimes of wilful killing and mistreatment and of the destruction of protected civilian property and the crime against humanity of extermination," the report found.

The commission also found that Palestinian armed groups were responsible for war crimes.Battoul, who asked ABC to use only her first name, said her family members who were killed were innocent civilians and not legitimate targets.

"They were just elderly people with their kids just getting their stuff ready to leave and they bombed their house," she said.

The recent attacks have made it too hard for her to go to work. 

"I couldn't face people because they don't truly understand how this feels," she said. 

Professor Laachir said she was concerned about the Lebanese community watching from afar if the war in Lebanon was prolonged. 

"The Lebanese population in Australia still have strong links to their homeland … if these attacks on Lebanon continue at a similar speed as the massacres of civilians in Gaza, it will be a huge concern to the Lebanese and Arab population," she said.

Batoul said it was "painful" to watch. 

A large majority of her family in Lebanon have had to leave their homes.