Sierra Leonean migrants, including housekeeper Fatima Samuella Tholley, are trapped in Lebanon, desperately crying out for help as Israeli airstrikes intensify across the country. “We don’t want to die here,” Fatima tearfully told AFP, recounting how an Israeli airstrike killed her employer and destroyed nearly all her possessions in southern Lebanon.

Fatima, 27, and her cousin managed to escape to Beirut, crammed into an ambulance, but found themselves lost in a chaotic and bombarded city. “We don’t know if we will live or die. Only God knows,” she said, overwhelmed with fear and uncertainty, clutching her only remaining belongings—a plastic bag of clothes. With no passport or identification, she has been hiding in the storage room of an empty apartment offered by a stranger.

Since mid-September, over 1,000 people have died, and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes due to Israeli strikes targeting Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon. The situation has left migrant workers, many of whom are trapped in the country under the oppressive “kafala” system, in a particularly dire state. This sponsorship system ties workers’ legal status to their employers, often leading to abuses such as the confiscation of passports and wages.

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Mariatu Musa, a 29-year-old housekeeper from Sierra Leone, shared a similar story. “When we came here, our madams took our passports. They seized everything,” she explained. Now, after airstrikes burned down their employers’ homes, she and other workers are left with nothing but their lives. “Even our madams… only we survived,” she said.

Sierra Leone’s foreign ministry is attempting to locate its citizens trapped in Lebanon and provide emergency travel certificates. However, the migrant workers have no access to news and struggle to communicate, as most speak neither French nor Arabic. They can only watch the destruction unfold from their windows as Beirut is battered by constant bombings.

In an act of desperation, the women cry for help. “We don’t know anything,” Mariatu sobbed. “Our neighbors don’t open the door for us because we are Black. We don’t want to die here.”

Many Sierra Leonean workers like Fatima and Mariatu came to Lebanon with hopes of sending remittances home, earning around $150 a month while working grueling hours, often from 6:00 am until midnight, seven days a week. They are rarely allowed to leave their employers’ homes. Now, with their homes destroyed and passports confiscated, they are left stranded and afraid.

Patricia Antwin, another domestic worker, fled her first employer due to sexual harassment, leaving behind her passport. She had hoped for a better situation with a second employer, but when airstrikes hit their home, she was left abandoned and helpless. “The people I worked for, they left me. They just left me,” she told AFP.

Patricia, along with others, is now seeking shelter wherever she can, with little more than the clothes on her back. Housekeeper Kadij Koroma has been sleeping on the streets for nearly a week, relying on the kindness of strangers for food. “Everywhere you go, bomb, everywhere you go, bomb,” she said, unsure if her employer or friends from Sierra Leone had survived the violence.

As airstrikes continue and uncertainty grows, these women are left in limbo, without the resources or ability to return home, praying that they won’t become casualties of a war not their own.