{"id":3692,"date":"2026-03-04T20:31:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T20:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/3692\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T20:31:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T20:31:06","slug":"israeli-military-orders-evacuations-in-southern-lebanon-as-strikes-intensify","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/3692\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli military orders evacuations in southern Lebanon as strikes intensify"},"content":{"rendered":"

BEIRUT (AP) \u2014 Israel\u2019s military issued warnings to residents of dozens of border villages in southern Lebanon<\/a> to evacuate \u201cimmediately\u201d Wednesday as airstrikes on suburbs of Beirut intensified and Hezbollah claimed more attacks.<\/p>\n

Lebanon was dragged into the broader war in the Middle East<\/a> early Monday when Hezbollah fired rockets and drones into northern Israel, triggering Israeli retaliatory airstrikes that killed more than 70 people, wounded more than 400 and displaced tens of thousands of people from southern Lebanon, the eastern Bekaa Valley and Beirut\u2019s southern suburbs.<\/p>\n

The ongoing conflict is not the first between Hezbollah and Israel. Hezbollah began firing into Israel a day after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza. After months of low-level fighting, a full-scale war erupted in September 2024 and Israel later launched a ground invasion of Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Israeli forces withdrew from most of southern Lebanon after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire halted the fighting in late 2024, but continued to occupy five points on the Lebanese side of the border. Israel also pressed on with near-daily strikes, primarily in southern Lebanon, saying that Hezbollah has been trying to rebuild its positions there, killing nearly 400 people while the ceasefire was in place. <\/p>\n

Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Kassem says the group had no choice but to fire rockets because of this. \u201cAs long as the occupation is present, then the resistance and its weapons are a legitimate right,\u201d Kassem said in his first speech since this latest escalation.<\/p>\n

Kassem slammed the Lebanese government\u2019s criticism of Hezbollah\u2019s rocket fire and its commitment to disarm the group, claiming that Israel cannot stop its attacks through diplomatic means alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy did you make a big deal out of this salvo of rockets? The reason is the ongoing aggression,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

People in southern Lebanon ordered to immediately move north<\/p>\n

The Israeli military issued a statement Wednesday telling people living in dozens of villages in southern Lebanon close to the border with Israel to evacuate and move \u201cimmediately\u201d north of the Litani River.<\/p>\n

The Israeli army\u2019s Arabic spokesperson warned on X that if people decide to move south of the river, they will be endangering their lives.<\/p>\n

The area south of the Litani River, about 8% of the territory of Lebanon, is mostly along the border with Israel. The Lebanese government says it has cleared<\/a> the area of Hezbollah\u2019s military presence there over the past months. <\/p>\n

The order came after airstrikes overnight on the predominantly Christian southeastern suburb of Hazmieh that struck a hotel. Others hit the towns of Aramoun and Saadiyat just south of Beirut\u2019s international airport, killing six and wounding eight. Another strike hit the eastern city of Baalbek, killing six people and wounding 15, according to state media.<\/p>\n

The four airstrikes came without a warning in advance, which usually implies targeted assassinations. Security officials speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations said the man targeted in Hazmieh was a local official in Beirut\u2019s southern suburb of Ghobeiri, and that the official was wounded.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe live in a country where a missile can fall on your head at any moment,\u201d said Maggie Shibli, wife of the owner of the Hotel Comfort in a Hazmieh neighborhood that was struck early Wednesday. <\/p>\n

Abbas Najdeh, who was displaced from the southern port city of Tyre and was staying at the hotel, said: \u201cWe were sleeping then suddenly I, my children and my wife were thrown\u201d by the blast.<\/p>\n

Also Wednesday, the Israeli military issued several warnings to people to evacuate buildings in Beirut\u2019s southern suburbs, which were struck shortly afterward.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah said Wednesday that it carried out several attacks on Israel, including two in which the group claimed that it used precision-guided missiles.<\/p>\n

Concerns that shelling may lead to a wider Israeli ground invasion <\/p>\n

The warning for people to leave the area south of the Litani River came a day after Israel sent additional troops into southern<\/a> Lebanon. Israeli forces had already been occupying several border points in Lebanon since the November 2024 cease-fire ended the previous Israel-Hezbollah war.<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear if Israel was preparing for a wider ground invasion. Lebanon\u2019s state-run National News Agency reported Israeli artillery shelling on several Lebanese villages along the border, including Aid al-Shaab and Beit Lif.<\/p>\n

The Lebanese military in a statement that it arrested 27 people for \u201cillegally possessing weapons and munitions,\u201d and that it had redeployed some forces in the south and further to the east along the border with Syria. It did not say whether the 26 Lebanese and one Palestinian apprehended were affiliated with Hezbollah or other militant groups. <\/p>\n

The cash-strapped army\u2019s move comes after Prime Minister Nawaf Salam\u2019s government and President Joseph Aoun urged state security agencies to pursue people firing rockets from Lebanon, as part of their broader policy of asserting the government\u2019s full sovereignty over the country, while also criticizing Israel\u2019s strikes and ground movements. <\/p>\n

In eastern Lebanon, the main border crossing with Syria was briefly closed Wednesday after Lebanese officials received a warning of an impending Israeli strike, which officials later said turned out to be a false alarm.<\/p>\n

Anxieties have also been running high in Lebanon in recent days over a buildup of Syrian forces on the border. The current Syrian government is hostile to Iran and Hezbollah, as they were on opposite sides of Syria\u2019s civil war that ended with the ouster of former President Bashar Assad in December 2024.<\/p>\n

A high-ranking Syrian official told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the troop buildup was \u201cpurely defensive\u201d and to \u201cprevent smuggling and counter any unforeseen scenario.\u201d The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren\u2019t authorized to comment publicly.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEIRUT (AP) \u2014 Israel\u2019s military issued warnings to residents of dozens of border villages in southern Lebanon to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[719,2371,2706,887,847,197,100,37,199,849,93,2705,324,2704,200,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-3692","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-2024-2025-mideast-wars","9":"tag-2024-2026-mideast-wars","10":"tag-abbas-najdeh","11":"tag-bashar-assad","12":"tag-beirut","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-hezbollah","15":"tag-israel","16":"tag-israel-government","17":"tag-joseph-aoun","18":"tag-lebanon","19":"tag-maggie-shibli","20":"tag-mideast-wars","21":"tag-naim-kassem","22":"tag-war-and-unrest","23":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116172808782397049","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}