Last week, Israel started its bombing of the ancient historical city of Tyre, along the southern Lebanese coast. The attacks hit areas close to the UN World Heritage site in the city, which includes an ancient Phoenician city and Roman ruins.
Monday morning saw a new round of attacks by Israeli warplanes, with an immediate evacuation order issued for central Tyre and airstrikes starting almost immediately. The attacks killed at least seven people, and wounded 17 others.
Israel has been issuing broad evacuation orders across all of Lebanon, impacting much of the nation’s population and displacing over a million people so far. Today’s Tyre order was unusual in its specificity, as it ordered residents to “flee north” to the area beyond the Awali River. Awali is north of Sidon, and nearly into the southern suburbs of Beirut, which are also under intense Israeli attacks.
Fleeing north, or even just fleeing outside of the evacuation orders is no guarantee of safety, of course. Just yesterday Israel attacked the nearby town of Herat Saida, killing nine civilians including a child, despite that town not being inside any extent evacuation orders.
Israel’s military is offering rare comments on their new Tyre strikes, claiming that the city is a “major Hezbollah stronghold,” and that there are Hezbollah compounds across the city. They insisted the attacks targeted buildings used by Hezbollah members and “observation posts.”
Israel offered no evidence of these claims, though of course it would be difficult to disprove that random buildings hit in a city full of displaced people had never been “used” by a member of Hezbollah. There was no real opportunity to contest the claims at any rate since the attacks began soon after that.