Lebanese group Hezbollah urges Israelis to evacuate border areas as Israel continues bombing the country.
The death toll from Israeli attacks on Lebanon this week has risen to at least 123 people, the Lebanese Health Ministry says, as a new wave of attacks hit the country and Hezbollah warned Israeli residents to evacuate towns within a 5-kilometer (3.11-mile) radius of its northern border, on one of the fiercest fronts in the broader US-Israel war against Iran.
“The number of victims of Monday’s Israeli aggression… rose to 123 martyrs and 683 wounded,” a ministry statement said Thursday.
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Lebanese state media said early on Friday that Israel had launched airstrikes against several cities in southern Lebanon.
“Enemy warplanes launched night strikes against the cities of Srifa, Aita al-Shaab, Touline, Sawana and Majdal Selm,” the official National News Agency (NNA) reported.
Another attack targeted the eastern Lebanese city of Dours at dawn, ANN said.
Hezbollah’s message to evacuate border areas came less than a day after Israel threatened residents to leave Beirut’s southern suburbs, triggering a huge exodus from a swath of the capital’s densely populated southern suburbs known as Dahiyeh, where around half a million people live.
The Israeli military said it had carried out 26 rounds of strikes in Dahiyeh. It claims to have attacked several infrastructures used by Hezbollah, including the headquarters of the group’s Executive Council and a warehouse with drones.
“Your army’s aggression against Lebanese sovereignty and its safe citizens, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the expulsion campaign it is carrying out will not go unanswered,” Hezbollah said.
Hezbolla claimed responsibility for a wave of attacks early Friday against Israeli ground forces, including those that have entered Lebanese territory in recent days.
In a statement on Telegram, Hezbollah said its fighters had attacked Israeli forces in several areas, including Maroun al-Ras and Kfar Kila, which are already within Lebanese territory.
Hezbollah also attacked the Israeli military camp of Yoav in the occupied Golan Heights and a naval base in the Israeli port of Haifa, according to the statement.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Israel has said it will not evacuate its border towns and has sent more troops to Lebanon, saying it was a defensive measure meant to protect its citizens living nearby.
Instead, tens of thousands of people have fled their homes following threats from Israel, with a mass exodus from Beirut’s southern suburbs leaving the area “almost empty”, the National News Agency said.
Hundreds of displaced families had to seek refuge on a Beirut beach, where they waited dejectedly, many of them for the second time, after being evacuated during the 2024 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
‘We are not animals’
Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, said the humanitarian crisis is growing rapidly, as people seeking shelter can be seen “on the side of the roads on almost every corner.”
“There are not enough schools to house the hundreds of thousands of people who were forced to flee their homes after Israel’s threat of forced displacement in Beirut’s southern suburbs yesterday,” he said.
“People tell us: ‘We are not animals, we are human beings, our children are cold.'”
He noted that the Lebanese government opened several shelters and told people to head to the north of the country.
Khodr added: “But many do not have any means of transportation. It is not only the Lebanese who live in the southern suburbs of Beirut, but also Syrian and Palestinian refugees.”
Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war on Monday when Hezbollah opened fire, provoking Israeli airstrikes focused on the southern suburbs of Beirut and southern and eastern Lebanon.
The war has reignited fighting between Israel and Iran-allied Hezbollah fighters, with Israel launching a series of airstrikes between Thursday night and Friday on Beirut’s southern suburbs and other areas.
