Smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes on Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

The Israeli Army ordered civilians located near buildings it said were “affiliated with Hezbollah” in two neighbourhoods in south Beirut to immediately evacuate early Sunday (October 20, 2024), marking the facilities on two maps and saying the military would “work against” them soon.

The “urgent warning” was issued by the military’s Arabic spokesman Avichay Adraee, and concerned the neighbourhoods of Haret Hreik and Hadath.

“You are located near facilities and interests affiliated with Hezbollah, which the IDF will work against in the near future,” Mr. Adraee said on Telegram.

“For your safety and the safety of your family members, you must evacuate the building and those adjacent to it immediately and move away from it for a distance of no less than 500 metres.”

Similar warnings have preceded Israeli air strikes in recent weeks after Israel stepped up its campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah, which has a stronghold in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital.

Israel and Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, had been trading near-daily fire across the Lebanese border since the outbreak of the war in Gaza last year.

But Israel sharply escalated its campaign late last month, launching devastating air strikes and deploying ground forces.

Since late September, the war has killed at least 1,454 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures.

Smoke rises over Beirut’s southern suburbs, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Sin El Fil, Lebanon on October 5, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israel expanded its bombardment in Lebanon on Saturday (October 5, 2024), hitting Beirut’s southern suburbs with 12 airstrikes and striking a Palestinian refugee camp deep in northern Lebanon for the first time.

The attack on the Beddawi refugee camp near the northern city of Tripoli killed an official with Hamas’s military wing, along with his wife and two young daughters, the Palesitnian militant group said in a statement. Tripoli is much farther north than the majority of Israel’s strikes, which have been concentrated in southern Lebanon and Beirut.

Israel has killed several Hamas officials in Lebanon since the Israel-Hamas war began in October last year, in addition to most of the top leadership of Hezbollah.

At least six people were killed in more than a dozen Israeli airstrikes overnight and into Saturday, according to National News Agency, Lebanon’s official news agency.

The Israeli military said special forces were carrying out targeted ground raids against Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon, destroying missiles, launchpads, watchtowers and weapons storage facilities. The military said troops also dismantled tunnel shafts that Hezbollah used to approach the Israeli border.

Some 1,400 Lebanese, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians, have been killed and some 1.2 million driven from their homes since Israel escalated its strikes in late September aiming to cripple Hezbollah and push it away from the countries’ shared border. On Tuesday, Israel launched what it called a limited ground operation into southern Lebanon. Nine Israeli troops have been killed in close fighting in the area in the past few days, the military said.

Nearly 375,000 people have crossed from Lebanon into Syria fleeing Israeli strikes in less than two weeks, according to a Lebanese government committee. Associated Press journalists saw thousands of people continuing to cross the Masnaa Border Crossing on foot even after Israeli airstrikes left huge craters in the road leading up to it on Thursday.

Also on Saturday, Palestinian medical officials say Israeli strikes in northern and central Gaza early Saturday have killed at least 9 people, including two children.

One strike hit a group of people in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, killing at least five people, including two children, according to the Health Ministry’s Ambulance and Emergency service.

Another strike hit a house in the northern part of the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least four people, the Awda hospital said. The strike also left a number of people wounded, it said.

The Israeli military did not have any immediate comment on the strikes, but it has long accused Hamas of operating from within civilian areas.

The Israeli military warned Palestinians to evacuate along the strategic Netzarim corridor in central Gaza, which was at the heart of obstacles to a ceasefire deal earlier this summer. The military told people in parts of the Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps to evacuate to Muwasi, an area along Gaza’s shore the military has designated a humanitarian zone.

It’s unclear how many Palestinians are currently living in the areas ordered evacuated, parts of which were evacuated previously.

Almost 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza during the nearly year-long war, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths.

Jerusalem:

Israel announced it had killed the commander of Hezbollah’s elite unit in a strike Friday that Lebanese officials said left 12 dead and dozens wounded in the movement’s Beirut stronghold.

Ibrahim Aqil, who was also wanted by the United States for involvement in the 1983 bombing of the US embassy in Beirut, headed the Iran-backed militant group’s elite Radwan unit.

AFP journalists at the scene said the blast had left a massive crater and destroyed the lower floors of a high-rise building in the Lebanese capital’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold.

The killing of Aqil was the second of a senior Hezbollah commander since the start of the war in Gaza, following another Israeli strike in Beirut that killed Fuad Shukr in July.

It also came after two waves of explosions, on Tuesday and Wednesday, of communication devices used by Hezbollah members, which Hezbollah blamed on Israel, that killed dozens and left Hezbollah reeling while dramatically shifting the focus of the Israel-Hamas war northwards.

The Israeli military said Friday it conducted a “targeted strike” to kill Aqil and which also killed around 10 other senior Radwan commanders.

Lebanon’s health ministry said the attack killed 12 people and wounded 66 more.

Earlier, a source close to Hezbollah, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said the strike had killed Aqil.

“The Israeli air strike killed Radwan Force commander Ibrahim Aqil, its armed force’s second-in-command after Fuad Shukr,” the source close to Hezbollah said.

Hezbollah has not officially confirmed his death, but it said after the strike that it targeted with rockets an Israeli intelligence base it blamed for unspecified “assassinations”.

The United States had offered a $7 million reward for information on Aqil, describing him as a “principal member” of the organisation that claimed the 1983 embassy bombing, which killed 63 people.

Communication device explosions

Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters have battled each other along the Israel-Lebanon border since Hamas sparked the war in Gaza with its October 7 attack.

The focus of Israel’s firepower for nearly a year has been on Gaza, but with Hamas much weakened, the focus of the war has shifted dramatically to Israel’s northern border.

Months of near-daily border clashes have killed hundreds in Lebanon, most of them fighters, and dozens in Israel, and forced thousands on both sides to flee their homes.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Hezbollah was hit by an unprecedented attack that it has blamed on Israel, though Israel has yet to comment.

The attack saw thousands of Hezbollah operatives’ communication devices explode across two days, killing 37 people and wounding thousands more.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed on Thursday that Israel would face retribution for the blasts.

Earlier Friday, Israel said Hezbollah had fired dozens of rockets from Lebanon following air strikes which destroyed dozens of the militant group’s launchers.

Speaking to troops on Wednesday, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said: “Hezbollah will pay an increasing price” as Israel tries to “ensure the safe return” of its citizens to border areas.

“We are at the start of a new phase in the war,” he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meanwhile delayed his scheduled departure to the United States, where he is due to address the UN General Assembly, by a day, with an official citing the situation on the northern front.

Earlier Friday, Hezbollah said it targeted at least six Israeli military bases with salvos of rockets after overnight bombardment that people in south Lebanon described as among the fiercest so far.

‘Fear of wider war’

Residents of Marjayoun, a Lebanese town close to the border, said the overnight bombardment was among the heaviest since the border clashes began last October.

“We were very scared, especially for my grandchildren,” said Nuha Abdo, 62. “We were moving them from one room to another.”

Clothing store owner Elie Rmeih, 45, counted more than 50 strikes.

“It was a terrifying scene and unlike anything we have experienced since the escalation began.

“We live in fear of a wider war, you don’t know where to go.”

Calls for restraint

International mediators have been scrambling to stop the Gaza war from turning into an all-out regional conflict.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has tried to salvage efforts for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, called for restraint on all sides.

“We don’t want to see any escalatory actions by any party” that would endanger the goal of a Gaza ceasefire, he said.

Hamas’s October 7 attacks that sparked the Gaza war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Out of 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,272 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations has acknowledged the figures as reliable.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)