Israel orders evacuation of Lebanese communities north of UN buffer zone

The Israeli military has ordered the evacuation of villages and towns in southern Lebanon that are north of a United Nations-declared buffer zone established after the 2006 war.

The warnings issued on Thursday signalled a possible broadening of Israel’s incursion into southern Lebanon, which until now has been confined to areas close to the border.

Just after the warning, the Lebanese Red Cross said an Israeli strike killed four of its paramedics and a Lebanese army soldier as they were evacuating wounded people from the south.

It says the convoy near the village of Taybeh, which was accompanied by Lebanese troops, was targeted on Thursday despite co-ordinating its movements with UN peacekeepers.

It came after Lebanon’s health ministry has said that at least nine people had been killed in an Israeli strike in central Beirut.

It also said it is running DNA tests on remains they have obtained to identify others.

Earlier, Hezbollah said seven paramedics and rescue workers from its medical arm the Islamic Health Committee were killed in the strike that hit its office in Bashoura. The Health Ministry said 14 others were wounded in the strike early on Thursday.

Prior to the attack, the ministry said that 55 people were killed and 156 others were wounded in Israeli strikes over Lebanon on Wednesday.

It was the closest strike to the central downtown district of Beirut, close to the United Nations headquarters, the prime minister’s office and parliament.

It was the second airstrike to hit central Beirut this week and the second to directly target the Health Society in 24 hours.

No Israeli warning was issued to the area before it was hit. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strike in central Beirut.

Residents reported a sulfur-like smell following the strike in Beirut, and Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency accused Israel of using phosphorous bombs, without providing evidence.

Human rights groups have in the past accused Israel of using white phosphorus incendiary shells on towns and villages in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hezbollah has an armed wing with tens of thousands of fighters but it also has a political movement and a network of charities staffed by civilians.

Israel has mostly concentrated its airstrikes in south and eastern Lebanon, as well as the southern suburbs of Beirut where Hezbollah has a strong presence, but its attacks have spanned the entire country and killed many civilians.

Beirut’s southern suburbs also saw heavy bombardment overnight in areas where the Israeli army had earlier issued a warning online for residents to evacuate.

Israel was pursuing a ground incursion into Lebanon against Hezbollah while conducting strikes in Gaza that killed dozens, including children.

The Israeli military said eight soldiers have died in the conflict in southern Lebanon.

On Wednesday, the United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting to address the spiralling conflict in Middle East.

Iran’s ambassador to the UN said his country launched nearly 200 missiles at Israel on Tuesday as a deterrent to further Israeli violence, while his Israeli counterpart called the barrage an “unprecedented act of aggression”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed late on Tuesday to retaliate, and an Iranian commander threatened wider strikes on infrastructure if Israel did so. US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that he would not support an Israeli attack targeting Iran’s nuclear programme.

On Thursday Japan dispatched two Self Defence Force (SDF) planes to prepare for a possible airlift of Japanese citizens from Lebanon.

Two C-2 transport aircraft are expected to arrive in Jordan and Greece on Friday, Japan NHK national television reported.

Japan dispatched SDF aircraft in October and November 2023 to evacuate more than 100 Japanese and South Korean citizens from Israel.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Thursday her government had booked 500 seats on commercial aircraft for Australian citizens, permanent residents and their families to leave Lebanon on Saturday.

The seats are available to 1,700 Australians and their families known to be in Lebanon on two flights from Beirut to Cyprus, Ms Wong said.

The Israeli military said on Thursday that it had struck around 200 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities and observation posts. It said the strikes killed at least 15 Hezbollah fighters. There was no independent confirmation.

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes, as Israel has warned people to evacuate from around 50 villages and towns in the south, telling them to relocate to areas that are around 60 kilometres (36 miles) from the border and considerably farther north than a UN-declared buffer zone.

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas’s cross-border attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 others hostage.

Israel declared war on the militant group in the Gaza Strip in response. More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, and just over half the dead have been women and children, according to local health officials.

In a separate development, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen said they had launched two drones at Tel Aviv overnight.

The military said it identified two drones off the coast of the bustling metropolitan area, shooting one of them down while the other fell in the Mediterranean Sea.