BEIRUT: Israel’s military ordered on Wednesday residents of dozens of border villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate “immediately” as airstrikes on suburbs of Beirut intensified and Hezbollah claimed more attacks.
Lebanon was dragged early Monday into the war in the Middle East, which erupted following US-Israeli strikes on Iran, when Hezbollah fired rockets and drones into northern Israel, triggering Israeli retaliatory airstrikes on different parts of the country that killed more than 50 people wounded about 300 and displaced tens of thousands of people from southern Lebanon, the eastern Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Israeli authorities and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire in late 2024 after the Iranian-backed militant group started firing at Israel following the war in Gaza. Despite the ceasefire, Israeli strikes killed nearly 400 people in Lebanon until Monday’s escalation.
People in southern Lebanon ordered to immediately move north
The Israeli military issued a statement Wednesday telling people living in dozens of villages in southern Lebanon close to the border with Israel to evacuate and move “immediately” north of the Litani River.
The Israeli army’s Arabic spokesperson warned on X that if people decide to move south of the river, they will be endangering their lives.
The area south of the Litani River, about 8 percent of the size of Lebanon, is mostly along the border with Israel. The Lebanese government says it has cleared the area of Hezbollah’s military presence there over the past months.
The order came after airstrikes overnight on the predominantly Christian southeastern suburb of Hazmieh that struck a hotel. Others hit the towns of Aramoun and Saadiyat just south of Beirut’s international airport, killing six and wounding eight. Another strike hit the eastern city of Baalbek, killing six people and wounding 15, according to state media.
The four airstrikes came without a warning in advance, which usually implies targeted assassinations. Security officials speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations said the man targeted in Hazmieh was a local official in Beirut’s southern suburb of Ghobeiri who got wounded.
“We live in a country where a missile can fall on your head at any moment,” said Maggie Shibli, wife of the owner of the Hotel Comfort in a Hazmieh neighborhood that was struck early Wednesday.
Abbas Najdeh, who was displaced from the southern port city of Tyre and was staying at the hotel, said: “We were sleeping then suddenly I, my children and my wife were thrown away.”
Also Wednesday, the Israeli military issued several warnings to people to evacuate buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs, which were struck shortly afterward.
Hezbollah said Wednesday that it carried out several attacks on Israel, including two in which the group claimed that it used precision-guided missiles.
Some are worried the shelling may lead to a wider Israeli ground invasion
The warning for people to leave the area south of the Litani River came a day after Israel sent additional troops into southern Lebanon. Israeli forces had already been occupying several border points in Lebanon since a ceasefire ended a 14-month Israel-Hezbollah war in November 2024.
It was not immediately clear if Israel was preparing for a wider ground invasion. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported Israeli artillery shelling on several Lebanese villages along the border, including Aid Al-Shaab and Beit Lif.
In eastern Lebanon, the main border crossing with Syria was briefly closed Wednesday after Lebanese officials received a warning of an impending Israeli strike, which officials later said turned out to be a false alarm. There have been false alarms elsewhere in Beirut and other parts of Lebanon, causing fears among residents.
Anxieties have also been running high in Lebanon in recent days over a buildup of Syrian forces on the border. The current Syrian government is hostile to Iran and Hezbollah, as they were on opposite sides of Syria’s civil war that ended with the ouster of former President Bashar Assad in December 2024.
But a high-ranking Syrian official told The Associated Press Wednesday that the troop buildup “certainly has no offensive dimension — it is purely defensive.”
“The deployment is perfectly normal and within reasonable limits, primarily to prevent smuggling and also to counter any unforeseen eventuality,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to comment publicly.
The ongoing conflict is not the first between Hezbollah and Israel. Hezbollah began firing into Israel a day after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza. After months of low-level fighting, a full-scale war erupted in September 2024 and Israel later launched a ground invasion of Lebanon.
Israeli forces withdrew from most of southern Lebanon after a US-brokered ceasefire halted the fighting in late 2024, but continued to occupy five points on the Lebanese side of the border. Israel also pressed on with near-daily strikes, primarily in southern Lebanon, saying that Hezbollah has been trying to rebuild its positions there.
Israeli military orders immediate evacuations in southern Lebanon as strikes on Beirut intensify
https://arab.news/pbnw3
Israeli military orders immediate evacuations in southern Lebanon as strikes on Beirut intensify
- The Israeli military issued a statement Wednesday telling people living villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate and move “immediately” north of the Litani River
- The order came after airstrikes overnight on the predominantly Christian southeastern suburb of Hazmieh that struck a hotel
New strikes light up the night in Tehran as Israel vows ‘many surprises’
DUBAI: The Iran war exploded further late Saturday as pillars of flame rose above an oil storage facility in Tehran, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised “many surprises” for the next phase of the week-old conflict.
Israel’s military confirmed that it hit the fuel storage facilities in Tehran. Associated Press video showed the horizon glowing against the night sky above Tehran.
It appeared to be the first time a civil industrial facility has been targeted in the war. State media blamed “an attack from the US and the Zionist regime” at the facility that supplies the capital and neighboring provinces in the north.
Meanwhile, Israeli air strikes killed eight people in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese Health Ministry said, and local media reported that an Israeli drone hit a hotel in Beirut, killing four and wounding 10 others.
The Israeli military said early Sunday that it targeted commanders of the Lebanese branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force in Beirut. The deaths come on top of at least 47 others killed in Saturday’s Israeli strikes.
Strikes and drone attacks in Kuwait, Iraq and Saudi Arabia also caused havoc and some additional deaths.
Earlier in the day, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian apologized for attacks on “neighboring countries,” even as his country’s missiles and drones flew toward Gulf Arab states and hard-liners asserted that Tehran’s war strategy would not change.
A rift between politicians looking to de-escalate the war and others committed to battling the United States and Israel could complicate any diplomatic efforts. Conflicting Iranian statements came from two of the three members of the leadership council overseeing Iran since Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the war’s opening airstrikes.
Pezeshkian, who is a member of the council, also dismissed US President Donald Trump’s call for Tehran to surrender unconditionally, saying: “That’s a dream that they should take to their grave.”
Trump threatened that Iran would be “hit very hard” and more “areas and groups of people” would become targets, without elaborating. Already, the conflict has rattled global markets and left Iran’s leadership weakened by hundreds of Israeli and American airstrikes.
“We’re not looking to settle,” Trump told reporters Saturday aboard Air Force One. “They’d like to settle. We’re not looking to settle.”
He described the ongoing US operations in Iran as an “excursion” and said issues such as rising gas prices and the safety of Americans would improve once the conflict ends.
Iran makes varying statements on attacks
Pezeshkian’s message, seemingly recorded in a hurry, underlined the limited powers exercised by the theocracy’s leaders over the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which controls the hundreds of ballistic missiles targeting Israel and other countries. It answered only to Khamenei and appears to be picking its own targets.
Pezeshkian’s statement said Iran’s leadership council had been in touch with the armed forces and “from now on, they should not attack neighboring countries or fire missiles at them, unless we are attacked by those countries. I think we should solve this through diplomacy.”
The US strikes have not come from the Gulf Arab governments under attack, but from US bases and vessels in the region.
But hard-line judiciary chief Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, another member of the three-man leadership council, suggested that war strategy will not change.
“The geography of some countries in the region — both overtly and covertly — is in the hands of the enemy, and those points are used against our country in acts of aggression. Intense attacks on these targets will continue,” he posted on X.
As long as US bases are present in the region, “the countries will not enjoy peace,” Iran’s Parliament speaker and a former Revolutionary Guard general, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on X.
Iran’s UN mission later suggested, without offering evidence, that strikes on nonmilitary sites “may have resulted from interception by US electronic defense systems.”
Late Saturday, top Iranian security official Ali Larijani asserted in an address carried by state media that “our leaders are united on this issue and have no disagreements with one another.”
He also said the leadership council has requested that “arrangements be made” to convene the Assembly of Experts to choose the next supreme leader, but did not say when.
Trump says the Kurds won’t be involved
Trump said he has ruled out having Kurds join the war, even though Kurdish fighters in the region are willing to assist in efforts to topple the Iranian government.
“The war is complicated enough without having ... the Kurds involved,” Trump told reporters.
Days ago, Kurdish officials told the AP that Kurdish-Iranian dissident groups based in northern Iraq were preparing for a potential cross-border military operation in Iran and that the US had asked Iraqi Kurds to support them.
The US and Israel have targeted Iran’s military capabilities, leadership and nuclear program. The war’s stated goals and timelines have repeatedly shifted as the US has at times suggested it seeks to topple Iran’s government or elevate new leadership.
The fighting has killed at least 1,230 people in Iran, more than 290 in Lebanon and 11 in Israel, according to officials in those countries. Six US troops have been killed.
Incoming missiles from Iran had people heading to bomb shelters again across Israel, with no reports of casualties.
Missile lands at US Embassy compound in Iraq
Three Iraqi security officials said a missile landed on the helicopter landing pad in the US Embassy complex in Baghdad. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. An embassy spokesperson declined to comment. There were no reports of casualties.
It was the first reported strike to land in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone since the Iran war began. Iran and allied Iraqi militias have launched dozens of attacks on US military bases and other facilities in Iraq since then.
Iraq’s caretaker Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani called the embassy attack a “terrorist act” carried out by “rogue groups.”
Strikes target other Gulf countries
US allies in the Gulf have said the Trump administration did not give them adequate time to prepare for the war.
Hours after Pezeshkian’s apology, the United Arab Emirates said debris from an aerial interception fell onto a vehicle and killed a driver. Four people have now been killed in the UAE since the war began. Authorities have said all were foreign nationals.
Sirens sounded earlier Saturday in Bahrain as Iran targeted the island kingdom. Saudi Arabia said it destroyed drones headed toward its vast Shaybah oil field and shot down a ballistic missile launched toward Prince Sultan Air Base, which hosts US forces.
In Kuwait, authorities said a wave of drones targeted critical infrastructure, including fuel tanks at Kuwait International Airport and a government building in Kuwait City. At least two people were killed by strikes in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
