Israel issues forced evacuation order for residents of Lebanese city of Tyre
The Israeli army’s Arabic-language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, has issued the latest forced evacuation order for residents of Tyre, Lebanon’s fifth biggest city, ahead of attacks.
“Urgent warning to the residents of the city of Tyre, including the Christian quarter, and the camps and surrounding neighbourhoods,” he wrote, urging residents in the southern Lebanese city to “evacuate immediately” and “move north beyond the Zahrani river”.
The strikes will be carried out because Hezbollah violated the ceasefire agreement and is targeting “Israel’s home front”, Adraee said, but these attacks, which occur on a near-daily basis, often are reported to kill civilians and destroy civilian infrastructure.
More than a million people have been displaced by Israel’s renewed war on Lebanon, sparking a refugee and humanitarian crisis with the sweeping evacuation orders forcing people to flee their homes, often with very short notice or no notice at all. Many have few resources, limited access to basic services, food, shelter and healthcare.
The IDF says it is countering the Hezbollah threat against northern Israel and has been demolishing homes, occupying territory in the south of Lebanon and launching attacks on towns and villages with impunity under this justification.
Iran, which has backed and funded Hezbollah for decades, has made it clear that no peace deal with the US can be signed until Israel ceases its attacks in Lebanon (not just Beirut, but in the south as well).
Lebanon was drawn into the war when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel on 2 March to avenge the US-Israeli killing of Iran’s former supreme leader.
Key events
At least four people have been killed by Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon, the country’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported this morning.
The strikes were reported in the towns of Adshit, Haboush and Kfar Rumman.
Israel issues forced evacuation order for residents of Lebanese city of Tyre
The Israeli army’s Arabic-language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, has issued the latest forced evacuation order for residents of Tyre, Lebanon’s fifth biggest city, ahead of attacks.
“Urgent warning to the residents of the city of Tyre, including the Christian quarter, and the camps and surrounding neighbourhoods,” he wrote, urging residents in the southern Lebanese city to “evacuate immediately” and “move north beyond the Zahrani river”.
The strikes will be carried out because Hezbollah violated the ceasefire agreement and is targeting “Israel’s home front”, Adraee said, but these attacks, which occur on a near-daily basis, often are reported to kill civilians and destroy civilian infrastructure.
More than a million people have been displaced by Israel’s renewed war on Lebanon, sparking a refugee and humanitarian crisis with the sweeping evacuation orders forcing people to flee their homes, often with very short notice or no notice at all. Many have few resources, limited access to basic services, food, shelter and healthcare.
The IDF says it is countering the Hezbollah threat against northern Israel and has been demolishing homes, occupying territory in the south of Lebanon and launching attacks on towns and villages with impunity under this justification.
Iran, which has backed and funded Hezbollah for decades, has made it clear that no peace deal with the US can be signed until Israel ceases its attacks in Lebanon (not just Beirut, but in the south as well).
Lebanon was drawn into the war when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel on 2 March to avenge the US-Israeli killing of Iran’s former supreme leader.
In a phone interview with the BBC, Donald Trump said he had stressed the need “to use a lot of common sense” when he spoke to Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, who he has reportedly grown increasingly exasperated with during the war.
“All I did is say, ‘we have to use sense’. We’re very close to signing a very powerful deal, a very good deal,” Trump said of the conversation. “No nuclear weapons, no nothing. You know, we have to use a lot of common sense. It was fine.”
On Netanyahu firing missiles against Iran early on Monday, despite the US president’s request not to, Trump said: “They had already gone. They were already on their way.” He added: “If I tell him to do something, he does it.”
Strait of Hormuz could be open in ‘two or three days’ if Iran peace deal is reached, Trump says
The US president, Donald Trump, has said the peace deal with Iran is in its “final throes” and suggested that the strait of Hormuz could open up in “two or three days” if an agreement with Tehran is secured.
“It will open up immediately upon signing,” he told reporters on the tarmac at JFK airport after watching the NBA Finals on Monday night, insisting that Iran will not be allowed nuclear weapons under the terms of a deal.
Trump said there are no “sticking points” that would prevent a deal from being reached, although the management of the strait, the way frozen Iranian assets are to be released and Israel’s war on Lebanon have all contributed to the deadlock in negotiations thus far.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to resume full-scale bombing of Iran, although has pulled back several times as he likely knows that new strikes will keep the strait of Hormuz under the effective control of Iran and lead to an extremely dangerous escalation of attacks on US-allied Gulf states.
The effective closure of the strait has led to soaring energy prices around the globe, including in the US where the war is deeply unpopular. Trump said:
We are very close to having a very, very good strong, powerful deal. If we go and bomb – which we can do very easily if we want and we spend another two or three weeks bombing – they’ll have nothing left whatsoever but you won’t have the strait open for months.
If we do the bombing a lot of people are going to be killed. Who wants to do that? I don’t . And we’ll have a signed document that is actually stronger than doing the bombing.
Striking a rather casual tone, Trump told reporters Israel and Iran had been in conflict for thousands of years, and after his intervention would leave each other alone for at least a week.
He said he had a “very good conversation” with Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under political pressure to continue his assault on Lebanon in order to degrade the military capabilities of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group.
“He (Netanyahu) was hit, and he hit back, and I can’t blame him for that,” Trump said. “But he was hit, he hit back, and now they’ve called it quits. So they’re going to just leave each other alone for another week or something.”
Israel, ignoring Trump’s wishes, attacked the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital of Beirut on Sunday in what Tehran viewed as a violation of the US-Iran ceasefire. Israel claimed it was targeting Hezbollah infrastructure after it said the group fired rockets at northern Israel.
Iran in turn launched missiles at Israel on Sunday and a fresh exchange of fire between the two sides occurred yesterday. Iran announced a cessation of its attacks after Trump demanded both sides stop “shooting” in a social media post.
Tehran said, however, that it would attack again if Israel persisted with its strikes in Lebanon, while Netanyahu warned that should Iran “make the mistake of resuming attacks against us, we will respond with full force”.