Israel’s military issued expanded, middle-of-the-night warnings to residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs to evacuate early Saturday, just hours after earlier orders were followed by a series of airstrikes, The New York Times reports.
The new warnings, issued at 3 a.m. local time on the social media site X, identified three additional buildings in south Beirut that the military said were related to the militant group Hezbollah, urging residents to get at least 500 meters away from them.
Earlier in the night, Israel’s military had pointed to three other buildings in the Dahiya, a densely packed civilian area near Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway. Soon after, explosions rocked the general area, lighting up the night sky with fiery flashes.
Those strikes were in addition to earlier blasts that Israel’s military said had targeted Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, believed to be in a leadership meeting in the group’s underground headquarters.
Some of the evacuation warnings were confusing, because the maps accompanying social media posts showed a much smaller area than the 500-meter radius specified by the military surrounding the buildings they said housed Hezbollah interests.
Earlier this week, the Israeli military sent out messages to Beirut radio stations and some cellphones, warning of coming attacks in Arabic-language messages. Those alerts were followed by more than 1,000 Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon, in the deadliest single day of attacks in decades.
“The I.D.F. don’t want to hurt you. If you are present in a building used by Hezbollah, you should leave,” the automated messages said, using the acronym for the Israel Defense Forces.
