Israeli airstrikes pounded the southern suburbs of Beirut today, smashing up city streets in an escalating conflict with Iran-backed Hezbollah that has sent tens of thousands of Lebanese from their homes.
Israel ordered everyone in the densely populated suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, to leave before launching strikes that lit up the sky overnight.
It earlier warned civilians to quit swathes of southern and eastern Lebanon, not just areas near its borders.
They were the widest evacuation orders ever given by Israel against Lebanon and prompted a huge exodus of people before bombardments that turned buildings into rubble and took the facades off apartment blocks.
Beirut has been hit with multiple airstrikes since Monday
Hezbollah said this morning it was fighting an Israeli ground incursion in the south, targeting a gathering of military vehicles near the town of Khiyam, and telling residents of Israeli communities near the border to leave.
Lebanon was pulled into the war in the Middle East on Monday, when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel that ignited a new Israeli offensive against the Shia Muslim group – Iran’s most powerful regional ally – 15 months after their 2024 war.
Israeli attacks on Hezbollah will likely continue even if its joint air war with Iran were to end, a source briefed on Israel’s military strategy said.
A separate Lebanese security source said, “this is about ending Hezbollah once and for all”, raising the prospect of a longer conflict in the country, where Hezbollah, while diminished, remains a powerful force.
Watch: Aftermath of airstrikes on suburbs of Beirut
An Israeli military official said several waves of strikes were launched against Hezbollah in the southern suburbs today, striking about 115 targets including residential buildings that the official said the group used as headquarters.
Israeli airstrikes have also targeted Tripoli in the north of Lebanon, Tyre, Sidon and Nabatieh in the south, and Baalbek in the east, the official said.
Israeli military video showed what it said were strikes on command centres and weapons facilities in Lebanon. Reuters could not independently confirm that the buildings Israel hit did contain command centres or weapons facilities.
Today, Israel’s military also told people in four towns in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa valley to leave, the latest in a series of orders that an international aid official said had reached an extent never seen before.
“What we saw in the last couple of days is, I would say … unprecedented in terms of the scale here in Lebanon of the warnings, the displacement orders, and the reaction, the panic also, that this has all created,” Imran Riza, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Lebanon, said.
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The fighting was triggered by the Israeli and US strikes against Iran almost a week ago that killed the country’s supreme leader, a figurehead for Hezbollah, and set the Middle East ablaze.
Hezbollah, a Shia Muslim group established by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982, was badly weakened by Israel during the 2024 war and has been under pressure over the past year to demilitarise and give up its weapons.
The Lebanese health ministry has reported 123 people killed and another 683 wounded as a result of Israeli attacks this week. Its figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The UN refugee agency said today that nearly 100,000 people had already been displaced into shelters in Lebanon. That estimate may rise sharply, as the population of Beirut’s southern suburbs, that Israel has said should be entirely emptied, numbers in the hundreds of thousands.
The UN human rights chief Volker Turk criticised Israel’s evacuation orders, saying they raised serious concern under international humanitarian law.
A member of the Lebanese civil defence stands at the site of overnight Israeli airstrikes in Beirut
Israel has sent tanks and troops deeper into southern Lebanon and they were visible yesterday operating in a bombed-out village near the frontier with smoke rising in the distance.
Hundreds of Israeli troops were also seen yesterday setting up fortifications on the Israeli side of the border fence.
In a message published in Hebrew on its Telegram channel early today, Hezbollah warned Israelis to leave towns within 5km (3 miles) of the border.
“Your military’s aggression against Lebanese sovereignty and safe citizens, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the expulsion campaign it is carrying out will not go unchallenged,” Hezbollah said.
During fighting between Hezbollah and Israel in 2024, tens of thousands of Israelis were evacuated from towns in the border area but many have since returned. Israeli officials have previously said there are no plans to remove them for now.
There have been no reported fatalities in Israel as a result of Hezbollah attacks.
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