Thousands of people in Lebanon are fleeing their homes as conflict between Hezbollah and Israel escalates following the eruption of war in Iran.
The conflict has already claimed 123 lives in the country and the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has warned that more than 84,000 people are sheltering in nearly 400 collective sites, according to the government. More than 30,000 people have crossed into neighbouring Syria since the escalation began.
After attacks on Iran, Hezbollah launched missiles and drones into Israel on Monday for the first time in over a year. Israel retaliated with bombardment of southern Lebanon and the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut after ordering its residents to leave, while the Iran-backed group warned Israelis to leave towns and villages at the frontier.
The Israeli military said it had carried out 26 waves of strikes overnight in the southern suburbs, saying targets included Hezbollah’s command centres and weapons storage facilities.
On Thursday, an Israeli military spokesperson told residents of the southern suburbs to move east and north, posting a map showing four large districts of the capital he said they must leave, including areas adjacent to Beirut airport.
Below, The Independent looks at what we know about Israel’s attacks on Lebanon.
Why is Israel attacking Lebanon?
Israel’s latest strikes against Lebanon came after Hezbollah, the extremist Shiite Muslim militant group founded in 1982, launched fresh rocket strikes in retaliation to the death of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei. As part of their aims, Israeli leaders have said they hope to eliminate Hezbollah’s leader Naim Qassem.
Hezbollah was founded after the 1982 Lebanon War by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and has repeatedly stated its goal to eliminate the state of Israel.
Israel and Hezbollah have repeatedly traded blows over the past few decades with tensions ramping up as recently as 2023. The militant group sent a barrage of rockets towards Israeli-occupied positions in the Shebaa Farms the day after Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attacks, sparking fresh conflict between the two sides.
Israel retaliated by launching drone strikes and artillery shells at Hezbollah positions and carried out airstrikes throughout Lebanon and in Syria. An operation from Israeli security services in September 2024 saw pagers in Lebanon blow up as they targeted Hezbollah’s communication systems; the group’s leading figures, including Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, were assassinated.
A shaky ceasefire agreement was agreed in November 2024.
How Hezbollah has responded
In a televised address, Qassem on Wednesday said his terror group’s resumption of rocket attacks on Israel this week is a response to the country’s continued presence and airstrikes in Lebanon since the November 2024 Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire deal.
The Lebanese government has accused the Iran-backed proxy group of dragging Lebanon into a regional war, after the US and Israel launched a bombing campaign on Iran that the Islamic Republic has responded to with missile and drone strikes across the region.
“By God, how strange you are,” Qassem said in the speech, addressing the Lebanese government, as quoted in The Times of Israel. “What is your response to the wide-scale aggression?”
He claimed the renewed fight “is not linked to any other battle; what we want is to stop the aggression.”
He added that they were also in “response to 15 months of violations against us, including the death of Khamenei.
Why the Lebanese government is not getting involved
Joseph Aoun, president of Lebanon, has condemned both the attacks launched by Hezbollah and the Israeli counter-strikes, calling his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in an urgent bid to halt the anticipated widespread strikes, according to a statement from his office.
Lebanon’s government banned military activities by Hezbollah on Monday.
In a statement after a cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said the state rejected any military actions launched from Lebanese territory “outside the framework of its legitimate institutions and affirmed that the decision of war and peace is exclusively in its hands”.
This “necessitates the immediate prohibition of all Hezbollah’s security and military activities as being outside the law, and obliging it to hand over its weapons to the Lebanese state”, he said.
Source: independent.co.uk