Hussein Salahdin, a driver from as mall Lebanese village in the Bekaa Valley which has been repeatedly pounded by Israeli aircraft, has taken shelter with his family in the No. 2 dormitory building of the Damascus University for half a month.

The six-member family were packed in the less-than-13 square meters room with one closet, one table, several mattresses and a small gas stove on which the Salahdins were cooking a simple lunch.

Crammed into the small space, four people of the Salahdin family were sleeping inside the room while the other two were forced to live on the open balcony.

The family could not even sit around the table to have dinner as they used to back at home.

And there was the overwhelming anxiety for the safety of relatives still staying in Lebanon, where Israel's massive air and ground offensives entered the 30th day on Thursday.

"My mother is still there and I don't know whether she is well," said Hussein with a deep sigh.

"She refused to flee. She said that she preferred to die rather than leave home. So what can I do ?" he mumbled helplessly.

"I want to go back to see my mother once the war ends," he added.

Hussein was not the only Lebanese who fled the conflict-ravaged homeland but had relatives still there.

Youssef Karout, 16, who stayed in the same dormitory building, said that his 75-year-old grandfather also insisted on staying at their home in south Lebanon, stronghold of Lebanon's Hezbollah which has borne the brunt of the intense Israeli bombardments and ground operations. A large number of residents there have been fleeing the violence.

"All the communications between us have been cut off since we left home. We know nothing about my grandfather," said Youssef, who was a student in a senior high school at the time of the eruption of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah on July 12 following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah guerillas.

"I want to say to (Israeli Prime Minister) Ehud Olmert, 'Stop the war, please, I miss my grandfather and I want to continue my studies'," he said.

Just like Hussein and Youssef, almost every Lebanese refugee here was homesick and worried out the beloved ones. They locked the only TV set in the building which houses 711 refugees on the pan-Arab satellite channel al-Jazeera, anxiously watching the latest developments of the Israeli military assault.

"We're awfully sad because no one would like to see his or her country is being destroyed by enemies like this," said another Lebanese refugee named Alli, pointing at the TV which was showing footage of an Israeli tank shelling Lebanon as an Arabic caption read "Israeli troops expanded their ground offensive in south Lebanon."

"There's no sign that the war will end, so there's no hope of returning home," he said bitterly.

Over 1,000 Lebanese have been killed and more than 3,000 others wounded in the continuing fighting. Lebanon said that a third of the casualties were children under 12.

Up to one million people, or a quarter of the Lebanese population, have been displaced and around 140,000 have sought asylum in Syria.