BEIRUT\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The Israeli military issued evacuation orders for entire neighborhoods of Beirut\u2019s southern suburbs, sparking pandemonium as hundreds of thousands of people joined a panicked exodus out towards Lebanon\u2019s north.<\/p>\n
On Thursday afternoon, the Israeli military\u2019s Arabic-language spokesman told residents of the Dahiyeh \u2014 the Hezbollah-dominated southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital \u2014 to \u201csave your lives and evacuate your homes immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n
The evacuation order was unprecedented in scale, encompassing a 6-square-mile, densely populated section on the capital\u2019s southern edge. Although often described as a Hezbollah \u201cstronghold,\u201d the Dahiyeh comprises four residential neighborhoods, with high-rises, commercial thoroughfares and restaurants, that are home to hundreds of thousands of Shiites but also Lebanese of other sects, refugees and migrants. <\/p>\n
Soon after the announcement, motorists flooded the roads, with cars, trucks, scooters, motorcycles \u2014 anything with wheels. Beirut\u2019s traffic \u2014 a shambolic affair in the best of times \u2014 became even more chaotic, with motorists honking and shouting in a bid to reach the highway. <\/p>\n
Some people parked their vehicles on the side near the exit from the Dahiyeh, ready to leave if necessary. <\/p>\n
Gaggles of residents gathered at a media vantage point in the nearby hills, many of them keeping one eye on Dahiyeh for signs of an attack and another on their phone for updates on social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cDahiyeh? There\u2019s not going to be a Dahiyeh any more,\u201d said one young man as he talked to a family member on the phone.<\/p>\n
Another man shouted on the phone, exhorting a family member to leave and saying that he would go there in his stead.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou come here and I\u2019ll go in your place. If I die, I die,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The latest round of Israeli-Hezbollah conflict was triggered by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran<\/a>, now in its sixth day. Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group that is backed by Iran<\/a>, launched attacks on Israeli targets in what it said was vengeance for the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei<\/a>. The strikes are also a response to Israel\u2019s near-daily attacks despite a ceasefire that took effect in 2024. <\/p>\n That ceasefire, which was brokered by the U.S. in November 2024, stipulated that Hezbollah give up arms in southern Lebanon and that the Lebanese army dismantle its military infrastructure in the area in exchange for Israel withdrawing back across the border. <\/p>\n Instead, Israeli forces remained in five positions on Lebanese territory, while committing more than 10,000 violations in the first year of the ceasefire, according to the United Nations peacekeeping mission. <\/p>\n The violence has in effect transformed a strip of territory along Lebanon\u2019s southern border into a no-man\u2019s-land, with villages and towns flattened and about 64,000 people unable to return home. Since the ceasefire was announced but before the current hostilities, more than 330 people have been killed in Israeli fire, including at least 127 civilians, according to health authorities.<\/p>\n Israel says its attacks are aimed at thwarting any attempt by Hezbollah to reconstitute a presence near the border. It has also demanded that the Lebanese government destroy the group\u2019s military capabilities in all parts of the country. <\/p>\n The Lebanese government issued a decision in August to put all weapons in the country under state control, tasking the army to disarm Hezbollah. But the army says it cannot take the militant group\u2019s arsenal by force for fear of sparking a civil war. <\/p>\n When the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran began Saturday, many Lebanese hoped Hezbollah \u2014 weakened by Israel\u2019s assassinations of its senior leadership and damage to its infrastructure \u2014 would remain on the sidelines. <\/p>\n In recent weeks, as tensions between the U.S. and Iran intensified, figures in Lebanon\u2019s government exhorted Hezbollah to stay out of the fight and received assurances that the group would do so.<\/p>\n Even some of its adherents were surprised Monday when the group launched a barrage of rockets and drones on Israeli positions across the border.<\/p>\n Israel responded with a massive aerial campaign on dozens of towns and villages, as well as the Dahiyeh, killing 102 people and displacing more than 83,000 others, according to Lebanese government tallies from before Thursday\u2019s evacuation order. Israeli troops advanced deeper into Lebanese territory and occupied additional villages after the Lebanese military withdrew.<\/p>\n Enraged at Hezbollah\u2019s escalation, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam announced a ban on the group\u2019s military activities. <\/p>\n \u201cWe declare our rejection of any military or security operations launched from Lebanese territory outside the framework of legitimate institutions,\u201d he said, adding that Hezbollah\u2019s military actions were \u201cillegal.\u201d He called on security forces to stop all attacks coming out of Lebanese territory.<\/p>\n It was notable that the measure was endorsed even by Hezbollah\u2019s staunchest allies in parliament \u2014 a reflection, observers say, of the widespread anger at the group for embroiling the country in war once again. <\/p>\n But in his speech Wednesday, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem responded to criticism of the escalation by saying, \u201cWere we expected to remain endlessly patient?\u201d<\/p>\n He added that Israel\u2019s wide-scale attack was \u201cnot a response\u201d but \u201can aggression that had been prepared in advance.\u201d<\/p>\n Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a hard-liner in the government who has long called for Arab expulsion, said in a video statement from Israel\u2019s northern border on Thursday that the Dahiyeh \u201cwill look like Khan [Yunis],\u201d a reference to the southern Gaza city all but razed by the Israeli military\u2019s operations against the militant group Hamas.<\/p>\n \u201cHezbollah made a mistake, and it will pay dearly for it,\u201d he wrote. \u201cWe are cutting off the head of the octopus in Iran, and in parallel, we are also severing the arm of Hezbollah.\u201d<\/p>\n With evening falling on Beirut and the attack yet to materialize, reports came of frenzied entreaties by senior Lebanese figures for Western governments to help quell the violence. State media said Lebanese President Joseph Aoun asked French counterpart Emmanuel Macron to intercede with Israel to stop the Dahiyeh\u2019s targeting and bring about a ceasefire.<\/p>\n Soon after, Macron issued a statement on X saying that, in a bid \u201cto halt the war and prevent the worst,\u201d he was talking to \u201cLebanon\u2019s highest authorities in order to establish a plan\u201d to end the fighting. He said the officials had given him \u201ctheir commitment to take control of the positions held by Hezbollah and to fully assume responsibility for security across the entire national territory.\u201d<\/p>\n He said that Hezbollah \u201cmust renounce its weapons,\u201d but also made an appeal to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. \u201cAt this moment of great danger, I call on the Israeli Prime Minister not to expand the war to Lebanon,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI call on Iranian leaders not to further draw Lebanon into a war that is not its own.\u201d <\/p>\n Minutes after his statement, the Israeli military issued fresh orders for Hezbollah-affiliated towns in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon\u2019s east.<\/p>\n A series of warning shots echoing through the southern suburbs made clear Macron\u2019s entreaties had no effect. Soon after, balls of fire erupted among the Dahiyeh\u2019s densely packed buildings; one particularly powerful strike elicited gasps among people \u2014 both reporters and residents \u2014 on the vantage point. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, Lebanon\u2019s government was racing to deal with the escalating displacement crisis. In recent days, it had turned schools into shelters and was opening up additional areas, but the most recent evacuation orders were likely to overwhelm their already meager resources.<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t expect an entire area being emptied,\u201d said Lebanon\u2019s public works and transport minister, Fayez Rasamny. \u201cCan you imagine behavior more criminal than this?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEIRUT\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The Israeli military issued evacuation orders for entire neighborhoods of Beirut\u2019s southern suburbs, sparking pandemonium as hundreds of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1794,95244,95242,42747,4915,95069,48,52,51,42744,47,50,49,592,14220,288,93787,95245,3293,4327,95243],"class_list":["post-206337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-attack","tag-beirut-suburb","tag-dahieh","tag-hezbollah","tag-hundred","tag-israeli-military","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lebanon","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-people","tag-phone","tag-resident","tag-residential-area","tag-southern-suburb","tag-thousand","tag-thursday-afternoon","tag-unprecedented-israeli-evacuation-order"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}