The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health said an Israeli airstrike on Tyre killed at least eight people yesterday, with the Israeli military warning the entire city to evacuate shortly after the strike.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported raids on more than a dozen other locations across the country’s south, as Israel pressed on with its war against the militant group Hezbollah.
It is acting despite a warning the day before from Iran that it would resume attacking Israel if it continued striking its neighbor.
Photo: AFP
Tehran insists that Lebanon must be part of any deal to end the wider Middle East war, which Hezbollah dragged Lebanon into on March 2 by attacking Israel in support of its backer Iran.
Residents of Tyre, including from the Christian quarter, were fleeing after the Israeli warning, with heavy traffic heading north.
In Sidon, further north, displaced people arrived from Tyre, some with belongings hastily strapped to the roof of their cars.
Israel has repeatedly struck Tyre since the latest war erupted with Hezbollah, following the militants’ rocket fire at Israel on March 2 to avenge the killing of former Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
However, until yesterday, Tyre’s Christian quarter in the Old City — a small, picturesque area where displaced people had also sought refuge — had been spared Israeli evacuation warnings targeting the rest of the city in the ongoing war.
“Urgent warning to the residents of the city of Tyre, including the Christian quarter, and the camps and surrounding neighborhoods,” the Israeli army warning on X read, referring to several Palestinian refugee camps in the area. “For your safety, we ask you to immediately evacuate your homes ... and move north of the Zahrani River.”
The Zahrani river is about 30km north of Tyre. The Israeli army last month declared all areas south of the river “combat zones.”
The NNA reported an Israeli strike on Tyre’s outskirts before the evacuation notice was issued, and further strikes on the city later in the day after the warning.
The health ministry said the prewarning strike killed at least eight people and wounded 32 others, with rescuers still searching rubble for survivors.
Hezbollah, the only Lebanese group that refused to surrender its arsenal after a civil war ended in 1990, has also kept up its attacks on Israeli troops who have invaded south Lebanon.
Last week, Israel’s military said that Hezbollah members were operating in Tyre’s Christian quarter and said it would warn people to leave if the group remained there.
Some people who had been sleeping in cars or tents at the edge of the quarter left for other parts of the city after that warning.
On Monday, the Lebanese health ministry said Israeli strikes on south Lebanon killed at least 14 people, including five in a strike near a Red Cross centre in Tyre.
Lebanese authorities say Israeli attacks since March have killed more than 3,600 people and displaced more than 1 million others.
On the Israeli side, 29 soldiers and one civilian contractor have been killed in Lebanon, the Israeli army said.
Neither side has respected a ceasefire first announced in April.
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