BEIRUT (Reuters) -The Israeli army issued an evacuation order on Sunday for residents of a southern Beirut neighborhood, the first such warning in almost a month, in anticipation of a possible strike on what it says are Hezbollah targets – further testing a fragile ceasefire.
The Israeli army’s spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, said on X that residents should evacuate several buildings in the Hadath neighborhood and move “at least 300 meters away”.
Residents reported hearing gunfire across the area, which they said they believed was intended to warn people to leave, as well as seeing a massive traffic jam on roads leading from the area.
“To everyone located in the building marked in red on the attached map, and the surrounding buildings: you are near facilities belonging to Hezbollah,” Adraee wrote in a post that included a map of the potential targets.
Earlier this month an Israeli airstrike killed four people, including a Hezbollah official, in Beirut’s southern suburbs -the second Israeli strike on a Hezbollah-controlled area of the Lebanese capital in five days.
The strikes add to strains on the U.S.-brokered ceasefire that ended last year’s devastating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group.
The attacks on Beirut’s southern suburbs have resumed at a time of broader escalation in hostilities in the region, with Israel having restarted Gaza strikes after a two-month truce and the United States hitting the Iran-aligned Houthis of Yemen in a bid to get them to stop attacking Red Sea shipping.
Israel has dealt severe blows to Hezbollah in the war, killing thousands of its fighters, destroying much of its arsenal and eliminating its top leadership, including Hassan Nasrallah.
Hezbollah has denied any role in recent rocket attacks from Lebanon towards Israel.
(Reporting by Hatem Maher, Muhammad Al Gebaly and Laila Bassam; Editing by David Evans and David Holmes)
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