The Israeli military has launched a fresh wave of strikes against Hezbollah after warning people in Lebanon living in or near buildings where the group was “hiding” weapons to evacuate.
“The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is currently conducting strikes on terror targets belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation in southern Lebanon,” the military said.
Earlier on Monday, citizens in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, and other areas of the country received text messages and recorded messages asking them to immediately evacuate their residences. Lebanon’s minister of information, Ziad Makari, said he received a call in which he was asked to evacuate the building he was in. Drones could be heard flying low over Beirut.
In a televised statement, the Israeli military spokesperson R Adm Daniel Hagari said: “To all the residents of the villages in Lebanon, in the near future we will strike terror targets in Lebanon. We call on everyone who is near properties or inside homes where Hezbollah is hiding weapons, we call on you to distance yourselves from them immediately. This is for your safety and protection.”
Hagari said the warning was being distributed in Arabic on all networks and platforms in Lebanon.
It was not immediately clear how many people would be affected by the Israeli evacuation warnings. Communities on both sides of the border have largely fled because of the near-daily exchanges of fire.
The warning to evacuate took place amid Israel’s most widespread wave of strikes against Iran-backed Hezbollah in nearly a year of conflict, simultaneously targeting Lebanon’s south, eastern Bekaa valley and northern regions near Syria.
Asked by reporters about a possible Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon, Hagari said “we will do whatever is needed” to return evacuated residents of northern Israel to their homes safely, a priority for the Israeli government.
About 60,000 calls were made across all of Lebanon, which played a pre-recorded message instructing people to evacuate their homes, said Imad Kreidieh, the chair of Ogero, which operates Lebanon’s telecommunications infrastructure.
“What the Israelis are doing is sending a bunch of automated voice recordings through international carriers, the system doesn’t recognise them as Israeli calls, most of them are generated as calls coming from friendly country,” Kreidieh told the Guardian. He added that it was an “old technique” also used by Israel during its July 2006 war with Hezbollah.
Ogero had “located the source of the calls and will stop it”, Kreidieh said.
Makari said: “The method is not strange to the Israeli enemy, which uses all means in its psychological warfare … we call to not lend the matter more [attention] than it deserves,” he said.
Since the beginning of the war between Hamas and Israel, the Israeli military and Hezbollah have managed to avoid an all-out war, engaging instead in a limited conflict of attrition.
However, escalating strikes and counterstrikes have raised fears of an all-out war. Last week, walkie-talkies and pagers bought by Hezbollah for its members exploded, killing 42 people and wounding more than 3,000, and on Friday an Israeli strike on a Beirut suburb killed a top Hezbollah military commander and more than a dozen fighters, as well as dozens of civilians, including children.
On Sunday, Hezbollah launched about 150 rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel in retaliation for Friday’s strike.
Hezbollah has vowed to continue its strikes in solidarity with the Palestinians and Hamas, a fellow Iran-backed militant group, while Israel says it is committed to returning calm to the border.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the strikes on Monday hit a forested area in the central province of Byblos, about 81 miles (130km) north of the Israeli-Lebanese border, for the first time since the exchanges began in October. No injuries were reported there. Israel also bombed targets in the north-eastern Baalbek and Hermel regions, where a shepherd was killed and two family members were wounded, according to the news agency. It said 17 people were wounded in the strikes.
Israel has accused Hezbollah of transforming entire communities in the south into militant bases, with hidden rocket launchers and other infrastructure. That could lead it to wage an especially heavy bombing campaign, even if no ground forces move in.
Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report
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