Israel attacks the Lebanese city of Tire after evacuation orders

Israel carried out at least four airstrikes on the historic Lebanese port city of Tyre, hours after it extended its evacuation orders to include several central areas.

Videos showed huge clouds of black smoke rising from the beach just a few hundred meters away from the Unesco World Heritage-listed Roman ruins.

Lebanon’s state news agency said the strikes caused “extensive damage” to homes and infrastructure, but there were no reports of injuries.

The Israeli military said it targeted Hezbollah’s command and control centers, including its headquarters on the Southern Front.

An Arab military spokesman had earlier released a map of the area where he said it would act “forcefully” against the Iranian-backed armed group.

Tens of thousands of residents have already fled the city in recent weeks due to Israel’s intense air campaign and ground attacks.

But before the strikes began, the spokesman for the Disaster Management Unit said that about 14,000 people were still living in the city, including those displaced from other areas in the south.

“You can say that the whole city of Tire is being evacuated,” Bilal Kashmar told AFP, adding that many people were moving to the suburbs.

Wael Farraj said that he and his family fled following the order to evacuate and were sitting near the beach when they heard that their house had been destroyed.

“We took the children, we grabbed what we could,” he told Reuters news agency while assessing the damage. “We came back and looked, and our house has been destroyed.”

“We live here and we are not rooted. We will live here… among the ruins.”

Another man, Issam Awad, said: “Like everyone else, we were sitting, and suddenly, without warning, the bombing started.”

“Thank God, we are all alive, and no one was injured in the explosion.”

The Israeli military said the strikes were part of its efforts to target Hezbollah activities and impede its efforts to rebuild its military capabilities.

It also accused the group of systematically occupying residential and religious areas to carry out attacks that endanger the people of Lebanon.

The National News Agency of Lebanon reported that Israeli planes carried out several strikes elsewhere in southern Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley on Wednesday.

These districts were targeted overnight as well as areas south of the capital Beirut, where Hezbollah is strong.

Israel’s military said the strikes in Beirut targeted weapons depots and production facilities, as well as Hezbollah-affiliated command centers.

The army also claimed to have killed Hezbollah factory commanders in the southern areas of Jibchit, Jouaiya and Qana in airstrikes in the past few days, and that their forces killed about 70 Hezbollah during the campaign in southern Lebanon to dismantle the group’s infrastructure. and arsenals.

There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.

However, the group said its fighters fired rockets into Israel on Wednesday, including one this morning that targeted the Gilot intelligence center, north of the central city of Tel Aviv.

A rocket siren went off in Tel Aviv, prompting the high-ranking US officials who were traveling with Secretary of State Antony Blinken to be ushered into a safe room in their hotel. It is not known whether Blinken was also forced to take refuge or not.

Another flurry of rockets hit two factories in the northern Israeli cities of Acre and Kiryat Bialik, causing damage but no injuries.

Later, Hezbollah confirmed that Hashem Safieddine, who was expected to become the group’s next leader, was killed in an Israeli airstrike south of Beirut on October 4.

Safieddine was a cousin of the late Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in another strike in the capital last week.

Israel launched its all-out military campaign against Hezbollah after a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the Gaza war, saying it wants to ensure the safe return of tens of thousands of Israeli border residents displaced by rocket attacks.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel in support of the Palestinians on October 8, 2023, the day after Israel launched a deadly attack on its ally Hamas.

More than 2,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since then, including 1,900 in the past five weeks, according to the country’s health ministry. Israeli authorities say 59 people have been killed in northern Israel and the Golan Heights.