Residents fled Lebanese capital in panic before assaults on Hezbollah targets while Tehran continues to launch retaliatory attacks
Photo- Israeli strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Thursday. Photograph: Mohamed Azakir/Reuters
Beirut -Israel has launched massive strikes against the southern suburbs of Beirut just hours after its military ordered the entire population of the area – more than 500,000 people – to evacuate immediately.
The Israel Defense Forces had told all residents of the area to “save your lives and evacuate your homes immediately”, prompting an exodus of the Lebanese capital’s population in scenes of panic, before its warplanes launched strikes against what it claimed were Hezbollah targets in the area. The area covered by the order included several hospitals and government ministries.
The strikes marked a significant escalation in Israel’s growing offensive in Lebanon, which began after Hezbollah fired missiles and drones into Israel on Monday.
Like Gaza’s Khan Younis
Israeli strikes have hit the southern suburbs of Beirut, state-run media said. Several people are reported to have been killed across the country as Israel’s deadline for Iranian officials to leave Lebanon expires amid the wider military operations between Israel and the US, and Iran.
Footage on Thursday evening showed smoke billowing over the neighbourhood of Dahiya. Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said that the strikes would make the Beirut suburb “look like [Gaza’s] Khan Younis”, a section of southern Gaza that has been almost entirely destroyed by Israeli bombs.
On the same day, Tehran launched retaliatory airstrikes against Israel and US bases across the region, and Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, promised a further escalation. “If you think you’ve seen something, just wait,” he said.
At the White House, Donald Trump said that members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) would be given immunity if they threw down their weapons, but otherwise would face “guaranteed death”. He said the offer for immunity extended to Iran’s military and the police.
Mojtaba Khamenei unacceptable Trump says
Trump told Reuters he should be involved in choosing Iran’s next supreme leader to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a US-Israeli airstrike on the first day of the war.
Trump said Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of the late supreme leader – the country’s head of state and commander-in-chief – would be an “unacceptable” choice.
“We want to be involved in the process of choosing the person who is going to lead Iran into the future,” Trump told Reuters. “We don’t have to go back every five years and do this again and again.”
Iran expanded its campaign of strikes, firing more ballistic missiles towards Israel, striking an airport in Azerbaijan, and raising fears that the conflict – now affecting 14 countries across the Middle East and beyond – could spread further.
Traffic jams as people leave Beirut. Israel told residents to ‘save your lives and evacuate your homes immediately’. Photograph: Bilal Hussein/AP
The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Thursday that the decision to assassinate Khamenei was made in November, far predating the breakdown in the nuclear program negotiations that Donald Trump claimed led to the US launching a preemptive strike on Iran. The original timeline was for Israel to target Khamenei in the middle of 2026 but Netanyahu moved it up the schedule after riots broke out in Iran, Katz said.
The claim could bolster critics of Trump, who say that Israel had dragged the US into a large war in the Middle East with Iran. Secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said earlier that the US launched the strike on Iran because it expected to be targeted after the Israeli attack.
THE GUARDIAN
