Israel issues forced evacuation order for entire Dahiyeh area of Lebanon’s capital, home to hundreds of thousands.
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People sit on the back of a vehicle as they wait in traffic in Beirut after the Israeli army issued a forced evacuation order for the Lebanese capital’s southern suburbs [Claudia Greco/Reuters]
Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has threatened to turn the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital into another Gaza Strip, as the Israeli military ordered hundreds of thousands of people to immediately leave their homes in Beirut.
In a video shared online on Thursday, Smotrich warned that the Dahiyeh area would soon look “like Khan Younis”, a city in southern Gaza that has been decimated in Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the enclave.
The health ministry on Wednesday said that “successive raids launched by the Israeli enemy” on the southern town of Qana, Tyre district, killed five people and wounded five others.
In Hennawiyeh, Tyre district, the ministry said the night prior that an Israeli strike wounded two people, and a follow-up attack killed them, along with a rescuer who came to the scene.
On day 10 of the war engulfing the Middle East, UN agencies on Monday reported massive displacement across the region, along with surging food and fuel prices that risk increasing hunger and suffering for the most vulnerable.
In Lebanon alone, nearly 700,000 people including around 200,000 children have been forced from their homes, “adding to the tens of thousands already uprooted from previous escalations”, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said.
The development follows a weekend of escalating Israeli and U.S. strikes against Iran, counter-strikes by Iranian forces across Israel and explosions in several Gulf States, along with Israeli strikes targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Heavy toll
In its latest update, the UN relief coordination office, OCHA, said that 294 people had been killed in Lebanon and more than 1,000 injured in the first eight days of the war.
On Saturday, 7 March, 41 people were killed in a single operation by Israeli forces in the town of Nabi Sheet in eastern Lebanon that also left dozens wounded, OCHA said, citing the Lebanese authorities.
In addition to “intensified airstrikes across multiple governorates” of Lebanon, the office also noted that Israeli evacuation orders had been reissued for a third time since the war began, covering the entire areas south of the Litani River, and the second time for Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
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