Israeli military orders residents in Beirut suburbs to evacuate before strikes
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has issued evacuation orders for several areas in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Civilians near several buildings in the Dahieh neighbourhood of southern Beirut should evacuate immediately, the IDF said in a statement.
Israel’s Arabic-language military spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted a map alongside the announcement, showing the buildings in Dahieh.
#عاجل ‼️ انذار عاجل إلى سكان الضاحية الجنوبية في بيروت
إلى جميع المتواجدين في المباني المحددة في الخرائط المحددة والمباني المجاورة لها في الأحياء التالية:
⭕️الليلكي
⭕️حارة حريك
⭕️برج البراجنةأنتم متواجدون بالقرب من مصالح ومنشآت تابعة لحزب الله الإرهابي ولذلك سوف يعمل جيش… pic.twitter.com/N60UKlRxmV
— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) September 30, 2024
Key events
Israel’s security cabinet has approved the next phase of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to Israeli media reports.
Members of the cabinet gave their approval during a meeting of the Israeli security cabinet this evening, the Jerusalem Post reported.
William Christou
Israel carried out two more airstrikes in Dahieh, the southern suburbs of Beirut, the second pair of strikes producing explosions that rattled windowpanes in the capital city and were heard as far as Bhamdoun, a town in the mountains surrounding Lebanon.
Israel conducted at least four airstrikes in Dahieh on Monday night.
Israel has carried out airstrikes on at least ten different locations across south Lebanon over the past two hours, in addition to shelling towns along the border with artillery, Lebanon’s state news agency reported.
Hezbollah said in a statement at midnight on Tuesday that it targeted a group of Israeli soldiers who were in the “orchard [trees]” facing the Lebanese border towns of Adaisseh and Kafr Kila, “achieving confirmed casualties”.
Kafr Kila is one of the towns that borders the area that Israel declared a closed military zone on Monday night, ahead of a potential incursion over the Lebanese border.
Peter Beaumont
Even as the Israeli ground operation appeared to be beginning, Israeli commentators were quick to recall that previous Israeli incursions into Lebanon over the past four plus decades had ended without achieving their objectives, with the occupation of southern Lebanon (1985-2000) prompting the formation of Hezbollah.
Among them was Netanyahu biographer Anshel Pfeffer, who remarked:
Israel always knows how it goes into Lebanon. It’s the exit-strategy it seems to struggle with. This government certainly doesn’t have one.
Israel always knows how it goes into Lebanon. It’s the exit-strategy it seems to struggle with. This government certainly doesn’t have one
— Anshel Pfeffer אנשיל פפר (@AnshelPfeffer) September 30, 2024
Israeli journalist Amichai Stein has posted a video that he said showed Israeli strikes hitting the Dahieh suburb of southern Beirut.
At least two explosions have been reported over the area, after the Israeli military issued new instructions ordering residents of three buildings in Dahieh to evacuate immediately.
Israeli airstrikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs
William Christou
Israel carried out two airstrikes in Dahieh, the southern suburbs of Beirut, just a little over 30 minutes after the Israeli military issued evacuation orders for residents close to what it said were buildings housing Hezbollah installations.
The sounds of explosions were heard by a Guardian correspondent in Lebanon’s capital city.
At least two Israeli strikes have been reported in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Reuters is reporting.
Two Israeli strikes reported in Beirut’s southern suburbs
— Timour Azhari (@timourazhari) September 30, 2024
The BBC’s Nafiseh Kohnavard says she heard a loud explosion and that her apartment shook.
Loud explosion, Beirut
Whole our apartment shook
— Nafiseh Kohnavard (@nafisehkBBC) September 30, 2024
It comes after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ordered residents to evacuate three areas in southern Beirut “immediately”.
William Christou
While bombing in Lebanon’s south continued, Israel’s military spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued maps of three locations in the southern suburbs of Beirut, instructing residents to evacuate more than 500 metres away. Adraee said in a video posted on Twitter/X:
To those present in the buildings specified in the map and those around them … You are near [installations] which belong to Hezbollah, for your and your family’s safety, you must evacuate these buildings immediately.
This was at least the second time that Israel instructed residents of Dahieh to evacuate prior to strikes.
On Friday, after carrying out sudden airstrikes which killed former secretary general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, Israel’s military issued similar warnings to residents of the southern Beirut suburbs to leave, bombing the area soon after.
The warnings, and subsequent bombings, almost entirely depopulated Dahieh and caused a wave of displacement within Lebanon’s capital city. Many displaced residents have been sleeping rough since, unable to find accommodation or spaces in government-run shelters.
William Christou
A resident in Marjayoun, a town facing the Israel-Lebanon border that was being shelled on Monday night, said that a municipal official had received a phone call ordering the town’s residents to evacuate – similar to phone calls residents Lebanon had been receiving over the last two weeks.
However, before they could evacuate, Israeli shelling of the roads surrounding Marjayoun had already begun. The Marjayoun resident said:
They called the Mukhtar of Marjayoun, and told us we needed to evacuate. But we can’t move, the roads are filled with shelling and airstrikes.
In Rmeish, a Christian border town that has been mostly spared from fighting over the past year, a first responder said that there had been shelling on Ayta al-Shaab, immediately to its west.
“The army moved away from the border back to their barracks,” the first responder said, echoing earlier reports that Lebanese soldiers had pulled back from their posts on the border.
Peter Beaumont
Footage posted by Israel’s Channel 12 filmed in northern Israel showed a series of powerful detonations lighting up the sky on the Lebanese side of the border.
IDF spokesperson warns Israelis not to publish troop movements
Andrew Roth
An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson has warned Israelis not to publish information on troop movements following remarks by some rightwing Israeli politicians that indicated a significant military operation may be taking place in southern Lebanon.
IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari cited security concerns in a post on Twitter/X. He said:
In recent hours there have been many reports and rumors about IDF activity on the Lebanese border. We ask that no reports be circulated about the activities of the forces.
“Stick to the official reports only and do not spread irresponsible rumors,” he added.
Earlier, Aryeh Deri, leader of the conservative Shas party, published a prayer asking God to protect Israeli troops operating “from the border of Lebanon to the desert of Egypt”.
A meeting of Israel’s security cabinet convened by Benjamin Netanyahu has ended, the Times of Israel is reporting.
The Israeli prime minister is now consulting with a smaller group of ministers in his office, the outlet reports.
Israeli military orders residents in Beirut suburbs to evacuate before strikes
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has issued evacuation orders for several areas in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Civilians near several buildings in the Dahieh neighbourhood of southern Beirut should evacuate immediately, the IDF said in a statement.
Israel’s Arabic-language military spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted a map alongside the announcement, showing the buildings in Dahieh.
#عاجل ‼️ انذار عاجل إلى سكان الضاحية الجنوبية في بيروت
إلى جميع المتواجدين في المباني المحددة في الخرائط المحددة والمباني المجاورة لها في الأحياء التالية:
⭕️الليلكي
⭕️حارة حريك
⭕️برج البراجنةأنتم متواجدون بالقرب من مصالح ومنشآت تابعة لحزب الله الإرهابي ولذلك سوف يعمل جيش… pic.twitter.com/N60UKlRxmV
— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) September 30, 2024
The head of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) has denied knowing that one of its employees, Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin, was a Hamas commander in Lebanon.
Hamas announced on Monday that the head of its Lebanon branch, Abu el-Amin, was killed along with family members in an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon.
Abu el-Amin was placed under investigation and suspended from his job at Unrwa in March following allegations concerning his politics, the agency’s chief Philippe Lazzarini said. He told reporters:
The specific allegation at the time was that (he was) a part of the local leadership…I never heard the word commander before. What’s obvious for you today, was not obvious yesterday.
Lazzarini, at a news conference in Geneva, called on UN members states to push back against Israeli attacks on the agency.
The Israeli parliament has been working to declare the UN agency a “terrorist body”, a move that Lazzarini described as “absolutely unconscionable”. The Unrwa chief accused Israel’s government earlier this month of driving a campaign to drive the agency out of existence.
Unrwa, one of the UN’s largest agencies, has 13,000 staff working in Gaza and more than 30,000 in the region providing health and educational facilities to Palestinian refugees.
Families of people who went missing in Israeli strikes on Lebanon have been urged to take DNA tests to identify the remains of loved ones.
A statement by the Lebanese police, reported by AFP, urged families to head fo specialised centres “to conduct DNA tests”, adding that it was:
To help families of those who went missing following the Israeli aggression on Lebanon and to make the process of identifying victims and their remains smoother.
For the past week, Israel has heavily bombed the country’s east, south and southern Beirut suburbs, killing hundreds of people and displacing up to one million.
An AFP correspondent in southern Lebanon reported hospital morgues were filled with unidentified remains.
Britain’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, has repeated calls for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, after he held a call with his US counterpart, Antony Blinken.
“We’ve both seen the reports in the media about a next phase for Israel in Lebanon,” Lammy told Sky News. He added:
We both agreed the position that we had at the UN last week that the best way forward is an immediate ceasefire and to get back to a political solution … We both are urging de-escalation at this time.
Lammy urged Britons in Lebanon to leave the country, warning that “the situation on the ground is fast moving”. He added:
Whilst we will do everything we can to protect British nationals – and those plans are in place to do so – we cannot anticipate the circumstances and the speed with which we could do that if things escalate in a major way over the coming hours and days.
The Lebanese army has evacuated observation posts at Lebanon’s southern border with Israel and moved to barracks in the border villages, CNN is reporting, citing a Lebanese security source.
It comes after the Israeli military declared a closed military zone around three towns in the far north on its border with Lebanon.
A Lebanese military official told AFP that the Lebanese army is repositioning troops stationed on its southern border.
The Lebanese army is “repositioning and regrouping forces” at the southern border following threats of an Israeli incursion, the official told the new agency.
As my colleague William Christou wrote earlier, Lebanese media is reporting Israeli shelling and firing tanks at border villages adjacent from the area it announced was a closed military border.
Patrick Wintour
Calls for a tougher response from Iran’s reformist-led government redoubled after news that Brig Gen Abbas Nilforushan, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) deputy commander for Lebanon and Syria, had been killed in Beirut alongside the Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah.
The dominant line in Iranian government circles remains that a direct war between Israel and Iran should be avoided as it would play into Benjamin Netanyahu’s hands and draw in the US – but that Hezbollah should not be left to fight alone.
The atmosphere in Iran appeared to have been affected by Netanyahu’s statement that Nasrallah’s death was essential to “change the balance of power in the region”. On Monday, the Israeli prime minister made an explicit call for regime change in Tehran, saying Iran will be “free … a lot sooner than people think”.
Read the full analysis here: The decapitation of Hezbollah leaves Iran weighing its options
William Christou
Lebanese media has reported that Israel has been shelling and firing tanks at border villages adjacent from the area it announced was a closed military border a few hours before, ahead of a reported Israeli land incursion of south Lebanon.
The area around Khiam and Wizani, both facing the Lebanon-Israel border, have been shelled for at least two hours.
They are both directly east of the closed military area specified by Israel’s military spokesperson late on Monday night.
If Israel did intend to conduct a land invasion across the Lebanese border, shelling and tank fire would likely precede their entry.