At least 217 killed in Israel’s Lebanon attacks as Beirut, south, east hit

The death toll from Israeli attacks on Lebanon this week has risen to at least 217 people, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health says, as a new wave of strikes pounded the country, in one of the fiercest fronts in the wider United States-Israel war on Iran.

An additional 798 people have been wounded and an estimated 95,000 displaced, the Lebanese health ministry said on Friday.

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said “the consequences of this displacement, at the humanitarian and political level, may well be unprecedented”.

“Our country has been drawn into a devastating war that we did not seek and did not choose,” he added.

Lebanese state media said early on Friday that Israel had launched air strikes on several towns in southern Lebanon.

“Enemy warplanes launched nighttime strikes on the towns of Srifa, Aita al-Shaab, Touline, as-Sawana and Majdal Selem,” the official National News Agency (NNA) reported.

Another strike hit the eastern Lebanese town of Douris at dawn, the NNA said.

The Israeli army also reported a new attack on the suburb of Dahiyeh in Beirut.

When the bombing began on Monday, Mohammad, 39, who lives in Dahiyeh, fled with his family. He went back on Thursday to collect belongings, departing only minutes before Israeli authorities issued a forced evacuation warning. He described the scene to the AFP news agency as “total chaos”.

Israel has also continued attacks in southern Lebanon with raids on the area’s biggest city, Sidon. Lebanon’s of Ministry of Public Health said five people were killed and seven injured in the Israeli attacks on Sidon.

NNA also reported Israeli warplanes over the southern towns of Tyre and Bint Jbeil.

Hezbollah’s message to evacuate the border areas came less than a day after Israel threatened residents that they should leave Beirut’s southern suburbs, prompting a huge exodus from a swath of the capital’s densely populated area known as Dahiyeh, where some half a million people live.

The Israeli army said it has conducted 26 rounds of attacks in Dahiyeh before the latest announced strike. It claims to have hit various infrastructure used by Hezbollah, including the headquarters of the group’s Executive Council and a warehouse with drones.

“Your military’s aggression against Lebanese sovereignty and safe citizens, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the expulsion campaign it is carrying out will not go unchallenged,” Hezbollah said.

Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a wave of attacks early on Friday on Israeli ground forces, including those who have entered Lebanon’s 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, within Lebanese territory.

Hezbollah also attacked Israel’s Yoav military camp in the occupied Golan Heights and a navy base in Israel’s Haifa port, the statement said.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Israel has said it will not evacuate its border towns and has sent more soldiers into Lebanon, claiming it was a defensive measure meant to protect its citizens who live nearby.

In contrast, tens of thousands of people in Lebanon have fled their homes after threats from Israel, with a mass exodus from Beirut’s southern suburbs leaving the area “almost empty”, the NNA said.

Hundreds of displaced families were left to seek shelter on a Beirut beach, where they waited despondently – many for the second time, after evacuating during a 2024 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

The Israeli army also issued a new forced displacement threat, telling residents of Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley to immediately leave the area.

Its spokesperson specifically singled out the villages of Nabi Chit, Khader, Sarain al-Fawqa and Sarain al-Tahta, where he said the Israeli military would soon be operating.

‘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 aren’t enough schools to shelter the hundreds of thousands of people who were forced to flee their homes after Israel’s forced displacement threat for Beirut’s southern suburbs yesterday,” she said.

“People are telling us: ‘We are not animals; we are human beings, our children are cold.'”

She noted that the Lebanese government has opened a number of shelters and told people to head to the north of the country.

Khodr added, “But many do not have any means of transport. It’s not just Lebanese who live in Beirut’s southern suburbs, but also Syrian refugees and Palestinian refugees.”

In the meantime, the UN human ‌rights chief decried on Friday, the large-scale ⁠evacuation orders issued by the Israeli army ⁠for southern Lebanon and Beirut’s ⁠southern suburbs. “These blanket, massive displacement orders we are talking here, about hundreds ⁠and thousands of ⁠people,” ⁠Turk said.

“This raises serious ⁠concern under ⁠international humanitarian law, and in particular when it comes ‌to issues around forced transfer, ” he added.

Hachem Osseiran, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spokesperson for the Middle East said: “Those affected by the evacuation orders include the elderly, persons with disabilities, and the sick or wounded, for whom evacuation is not always feasible. In Beirut, our partner, the Lebanese Red Cross, has supported the evacuation of patients from hospitals located within areas affected by these orders in highly challenging conditions, sometimes putting their lives at risk.”

The ICRC “is planning to support the transport of critical medical equipment from impacted facilities to help safeguard people’s access to essential healthcare,* he added.

Lebanon was pulled into the war in the Middle East on Monday, as Hezbollah opened fire, prompting Israeli air strikes focused on Beirut’s southern suburbs and on southern and eastern Lebanon.

The war has rekindled fighting between Israel and Iran-aligned Hezbollah fighters, and Israel launched a series of deadly air raids late on Thursday into Friday in the southern suburbs of Beirut and other areas.

Missiles struck the the headquarters of Ghana’s UN peacekeeping battalion in southern Lebanon, the Ghanaian armed forces said.

The army did not attribute blame for the attack but two soldiers were critically injured when the strikes hit, the military said in a statement.