Israel warns residents to evacuate parts of Tyre after strikes damage hospital
Israel’s military issued evacuation warnings for several neighborhoods in and around the southern Lebanese city of Tyre on Saturday, after Lebanon’s health ministry said a major hospital was damaged in strikes on nearby buildings that wounded at least 11 people, including three civil defence members.
“Urgent warning to the residents of the city of Tyre… Hezbollah’s terrorist activity compels the IDF to operate against it with determination,” the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson, Colonel Avichay Adraee, said on X. Israel has carried out strikes across Lebanon and launched a ground invasion in the south after Hezbollah entered the war in the Middle East on the side of its backer Iran on March 2.
Tens of thousands of people have left Tyre, but around 20,000 remain, including 15,000 displaced from surrounding villages, despite Israeli evacuation warnings covering most of the city and a wide swathe of the south. The health ministry in Beirut said overnight strikes shattered windows and caused suspended ceilings to collapse inside the Lebanese Italian Hospital after two nearby buildings were destroyed.
The hospital’s director told the state-run National News Agency (NNA) it would remain open to provide care despite the damage. A wave of attacks hit the Tyre area on Saturday, including one on the port that struck a small boat and damaged others moored nearby, according to a correspondent.
The NNA reported that another Israeli airstrike targeted and completely destroyed a mosque in the town of Baraashit in the Bint Jbeil district. Dawn strikes also targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs, a largely evacuated Hezbollah stronghold that has been repeatedly hit during more than a month of war.
The Israeli military said it had completed an additional wave of strikes targeting command centres belonging to the Quds Force Lebanon corps in Beirut and two headquarters of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. After hitting a bridge in the West Bekaa region on Friday “to prevent the transfer of reinforcements and military equipment,” Israel struck it again on Saturday, destroying it completely, the NNA said.
West Bekaa sits above Lebanon’s south, where Israeli troops have been advancing on the ground. The NNA also reported that in Shebaa near the eastern side of the Israeli border, Israeli forces abducted a man at around 3:00 am on Saturday. It was at least the third time Israeli forces have seized someone from southern Lebanon after infiltrating their home since the war with Hezbollah began, according to the outlet.
Hezbollah said Saturday it carried out a series of attacks on northern Israeli towns and on Israeli troops in Lebanese border towns, particularly Marun al-Ras, Hula and Ainata. The fighting has displaced upwards of a million people in Lebanon and killed more than 1,300 in the country, including 53 medics and three Indonesian UN peacekeepers in the south.
On Friday, the United Nations force said three peacekeepers were wounded in a blast inside a UN facility near Odaisse and were taken to hospital. Indonesia called the incident unacceptable after the UN office there confirmed the wounded were Indonesian, and said the events underscore the urgent need to strengthen protection for UN peacekeeping forces amid an increasingly dangerous conflict situation.