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Israel orders strikes on south Beirut ahead of UN meeting
Israel said Monday it would once again target Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold mostly spared heavy attacks since April, as it stages its deepest incursion into Lebanon in two decades.
The UN Security Council is expected to hold an emergency meeting later Monday on Israel expanding its operations in Lebanon, and the European Union called on Israel to "stop its military escalation".
Iran, in stalled negotiations on an end to its wider war with the United States, said a Lebanon ceasefire remains a key condition for any deal.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz said they had ordered strikes on Beirut's usually densely populated southern suburbs.
"In light of the repeated violations of the ceasefire in Lebanon by the terrorist organisation Hezbollah and the attacks on our cities and citizens", Netanyahu and Katz "instructed the IDF to strike terror targets in the Dahiyeh district of Beirut", a joint statement said.
Katz said separately there would be "no calm in Beirut" if Hezbollah attacks continued, vowing to establish a military-controlled zone in the area of south Lebanon's Litani River.
The Israeli military's Arabic-language spokesman Colonel Avichay Adraee, posting on X, urged Dahiyeh residents to evacuate "to preserve their safety".
AFP journalists saw hundreds of families fleeing the southern suburbs, some on foot or on motorbikes, others in cars packed with belongings.
Hours later, a correspondent said shops were closed and the area's streets were largely deserted.
Lebanon was dragged into the Middle East war on March 2 when Hezbollah fired rockets towards Israel in retaliation for the US-Israeli killing of Iran's supreme leader.
A truce to halt the fighting in Lebanon began on April 17, but has never been observed. Both Israel and Hezbollah accuse each other daily of violating the ceasefire, justifying their attacks by the other's alleged breaches.
- 'Vicious aggression' -
South Beirut resident Hadi, 24, said he had hoped for some stability during the truce.
"That feeling did not last long... Our fears intensified this morning after I received a series of messages about orders to bomb the southern suburbs, which caused widespread panic, and we immediately left the area," he told AFP by phone.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told a weekly press briefing that "a ceasefire in Lebanon is an essential condition for any deal aimed at ending the war" with the US.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said his country was facing "a vicious and reprehensible Israeli aggression", with the two nations set to hold a fourth round of US-hosted talks on Tuesday and Wednesday.
He called the talks "the only solution to stop the war with the least possible damage".
Beirut's southern suburbs and their surroundings have been struck twice since April 8, when huge Israeli attacks across Lebanon killed hundreds in minutes.
Israel's military on Monday also issued evacuation warnings for more than a dozen south Lebanon locations.
A day earlier, Israeli troops seized Beaufort castle, which commands sweeping views of south Lebanon, as the military expands its ground operations.
Israeli forces used the castle as a base during their previous two-decade occupation of southern Lebanon that ended in 2000.
- Evacuation orders -
Hezbollah said its fighters were now in a "battle of attrition" against Israeli forces near the castle, saying the fortress was "empty of any military presence" when soldiers entered.
The group also said it fired a missile fired at Tiberias, around 30 kilometres (19 miles) inside Israel and attacked Israeli forces inside Lebanon.
Katz said Israel planned to "to turn the Litani area into a zone under IDF security control, free of weapons and terrorists".
French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country requested the UN Security Council meeting, said Sunday that "nothing justifies the major escalation under way in south Lebanon".
A senior US official told AFP on Sunday that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken with Aoun and Netanyahu about the ongoing diplomatic negotiations and had said Hezbollah must be the first to cease attacks.
Military delegations from Lebanon and Israel held talks in Washington on Friday ahead of the negotiations this week.
"The United States proposed a clear sequence: Hezbollah must stop all attacks on Israel. In return, Israel would refrain from escalation in Beirut," said the official, requesting anonymity.
Lebanon says Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,412 people since March 2.
Israel says 25 soldiers and one civilian contractor have been killed over the same period.
S. Soares--JDB
