Israel attacks the Lebanese city of Tire after an evacuation order
Lebanon’s state news agency said Israel carried out at least four airstrikes on Lebanon’s historic port city of Tyre, hours after expanding evacuation orders to several central areas.
Videos showed huge clouds of black smoke rising from the coastal area, just a few hundred meters from the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Roman ruins. There were no immediate reports of any casualties.
The Israeli military had previously warned civilians to leave and said it would act “strongly” against the armed group Hezbollah there.
Tens of thousands of residents have fled the city in recent weeks in response to Israel’s intense ground and air invasion.
But before the strike began, a spokesman for the disaster management unit said about 14,000 people were still living in the city, including those displaced from elsewhere in the south.
“It can be said that the entire city of Tire is being evacuated,” Bilal Kashmar told AFP news agency, adding that many people were heading towards the suburbs.
Overnight, Lebanese media reported that Israeli aircraft carried out multiple attacks on the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut, southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley – all areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence .
The Israeli military said the attacks in Beirut targeted weapons production and storage facilities as well as Hezbollah command centers.
The army also said it had killed Hezbollah regional commanders in the southern regions of Jibchit, Jouaiya and Qana in airstrikes over the past several days, and that its troops had killed about 70 Hezbollah fighters in operations inside southern Lebanon aimed at destroying this group’s forces. infrastructure and arsenal.
There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.
However, the group said its fighters launched a series of rockets into Israel on Wednesday, including one in the morning targeting the Gilot intelligence base, located north of the central city of Tel Aviv. .
Missile sirens sounded in Tel Aviv, causing senior US officials traveling with Secretary of State Antony Blinken to be taken to a secure room in their hotel. It is unknown whether Blinken himself will be forced to take shelter.
Another salvo of rockets hit two factory buildings in the northern Israeli towns of Acre and Kiryat Bialik, causing damage but no injuries.
Israel has launched a full-scale military campaign against Hezbollah after nearly a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the war in Gaza, saying it wants to ensure the safe return of tens of thousands of residents there. Israeli border areas had to be evacuated due to rocket attacks.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel in support of the Palestinians on October 8, 2023, a day after its ally Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel.
According to the country’s Ministry of Health, more than 2,500 people have died in Lebanon since then, including 1,900 deaths in the past five weeks. Israeli authorities said 59 people were killed in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights.
