The Israeli military has ordered evacuations of a Lebanese city and other communities north of a UN-declared buffer zone, signalling that it may widen a ground operation launched earlier this week against Hezbollah.
On Thursday, Israel told people to leave Nabatieh, a provincial capital in southern Lebanon, and several towns and villages north of the Litani River, which formed the northern edge of the border zone established by the UN security council after the 2006 war in a resolution that both sides have accused the other of violating.
Some zones slated for evacuation are as far as 36 miles (60km) from the contested boundary between Israel and Lebanon, where there have been fierce clashes in recent days. The newly displaced will join more than a million people already on the move, further straining the Lebanese government’s limited resources and contributing to what aid agencies say is an acute humanitarian crisis.
The evacuation order came amid rapidly escalating tensions in the north as Hezbollah launched 200 missiles and drones at northern Israel in the space of a day, one of the highest totals of recent days.
While a significant proportion of the munitions appeared to be aimed at areas right on the boundary being used by Israeli troops as gathering points for cross-boundary incursions, Israel’s home command issued new instructions late on Thursday to towns and cities further south into the Galilee to stay close to shelters amid fears of a widening barrage.
Israel also continued its air offensive against the militant group, hitting targets in Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon. Multiple airstrikes were heard in the capital from Thursday afternoon until late into the evening, with one reportedly hitting the office of Hezbollah’s media department in Dahiyeh, the southern suburbs of Beirut.
A source close to Hezbollah told the AFP news agency that Israel had conducted 11 consecutive strikes on the group’s stronghold in the capital’s south on Thursday evening, in one of the most violent raids since Israel intensified its bombardment campaign last week.
According to Israeli media, Hachem Safieddine, the presumed next leader of Hezbollah, was the target of the airstrikes on Dahiyeh.
On Thursday evening the Israeli military ordered Lebanese civilians near two buildings in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, to evacuate immediately ahead of airstrikes.
Elsewhere, at least 18 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike on the Tulkarm refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said.
The Israeli military said in a statement that its air force had killed the head of Hamas’s network in Tulkarm in a strike. It identified him as Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi.
Earlier, Hezbollah said seven paramedics and rescue workers from its medical arm, the Islamic Health Committee, were killed in a strike on its office in Bashoura. The health ministry said 14 others were wounded.
The Lebanese Red Cross said an Israeli strike wounded four of its paramedics as they were evacuating wounded people from the south. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, described a dire situation for medics treating casualties, with three dozen health facilities closed in southern Lebanon and five hospitals either partly or fully evacuated in Beirut.
“WHO calls for a de-escalation of the conflict, for health care to be protected and not attacked, for access routes to be secured and supplies delivered,” he said. “And for a ceasefire, a political solution and peace. The best medicine is peace.”
The Israeli military said on Thursday that it had struck about 200 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities and observation posts. It said the strikes killed at least 15 Hezbollah fighters.
Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah after nearly a year of rocket attacks that began on 8 October and that have displaced 60,000 Israelis from communities in the north.
There were also reports of strikes by Israeli warplanes in Syria. One in the capital, Damascus, reportedly killed the son-in-law of Hassan Nasrallah, the veteran leader of Hezbollah assassinated in Beirut by an Israeli airstrike on Friday.
Israel has struck scores of targets in Syria in recent months, most associated with Hezbollah or Iran. There are reports of a further recent strike by Israel against what may have been a store of weapons destined for Hezbollah in a warehouse near the port of Latakia.
Hezbollah is the cornerstone of a regional coalition of like-minded armed groups including Hamas, Syrian militias and others. All have launched attacks on Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians, drawing retaliation in a cycle that has repeatedly threatened to set off a wider war.
Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen said they had launched two drones at Tel Aviv overnight. The Israeli military said it identified two drones off the coast of the bustling metropolitan area, shooting one of them down, and that the other fell in the Mediterranean Sea.
Iran launched 180 ballistic missiles against Israel on Tuesday. Tehran said the attack was a response the killings of Nasrallah, an Iranian Revolutionary Guard general who was with him, and Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, who was killed in an explosion in Tehran in July that was widely blamed on Israel.
The Lebanese army said it returned fire after another Lebanese soldier was killed by Israeli artillery fire, marking the first time that the Lebanese army has clashed directly with Israel. Analysts say it is unlikely the incident will lead to further fighting between Israel and the Lebanese army.
In recent weeks, Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed at least 1,276 people, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Firass Abiad, Lebanon’s health minister, said 97 paramedics and firefighters had been killed and 188 injured since 8 October 2023. He accused Israel of war crimes, arguing that strikes that hit health facilities and workers were in “violation of international law and treaties”.
