By Abdelaziz Boumzar and Steven Scheer
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM, March 6 (Reuters) - Israeli airstrikes pounded the southern suburbs of Beirut overnight and on Friday, smashing up city streets in an escalating conflict with Iran-backed Hezbollah that has sent tens of thousands of Lebanese from their homes.
Israel ordered everyone in the densely-populated suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, to leave before launching strikes that lit up the night sky. It earlier warned civilians to quit swathes of southern and eastern Lebanon, not just areas near its borders.
They were the widest evacuation orders ever given by Israel against Lebanon and prompted a huge exodus of people before bombardments that turned buildings into rubble and took the facades off apartment blocks.
"We’re sleeping here in the streets - some in cars, some on the street, some on the beach," said Jamal Seifeddin, 43, who spent the night outside in the capital's downtown district.
"I've never slept on the ground like this. I've been forced to. No one even brought a blanket," he said.
FIGHTING IN THE SOUTH
Hezbollah said on Friday morning it was fighting an Israeli ground incursion in the south, targeting a gathering of military vehicles near the town of Khiyam, and telling residents of Israeli communities near the border to leave.
Lebanon was pulled into the war in the Middle East on Monday, when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel that ignited a new Israeli offensive against the Shi'ite Muslim group - Iran's most powerful regional ally - 15 months after their 2024 war.
Israeli attacks on Hezbollah will likely continue even if its joint air war with Iran were to end, a source briefed on Israel's military strategy has told Reuters.
A separate, Lebanese, security source said: "This is about ending Hezbollah once and for all", raising the prospect of a longer conflict in the country, where Hezbollah, while diminished, remains a powerful force.
ISRAEL SAYS IT TARGETS HEZBOLLAH FACILITIES
An Israeli military official said several waves of strikes were launched against Hezbollah in the southern suburbs, striking about 115 targets including in residential buildings that the official said the group used as headquarters.
Israeli airstrikes have also targeted Tripoli in the north of Lebanon, Tyre, Sidon and Nabatieh in the south, and Baalbek in the east, the official said. Israeli military video showed what it said were strikes on command centres and weapons facilities in Lebanon. Reuters could not independently confirm that the buildings Israel hit did contain command centres or weapons facilities.
On Friday, Israel's military also told people in four towns in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa valley to leave, the latest in a series of orders that an international aid official said had reached an extent never seen before.
"What we saw in the last couple of days is, I would say ... unprecedented in terms of the scale here in Lebanon of the warnings, the displacement orders, and the reaction, the panic also, that this has all created," Imran Riza, U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Lebanon, told Reuters.
The fighting was triggered by the Israeli and U.S. strikes against Iran a week ago that killed the country's supreme leader, a figurehead for Hezbollah, and set the Middle East ablaze.
Hezbollah, a Shi'ite Muslim group established by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in 1982, was badly weakened by Israel during the 2024 war and has been under pressure over the past year to demilitarise and give up its weapons.
The Lebanese health ministry has reported 123 people killed and another 683 wounded as a result of Israeli attacks this week. Its figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The U.N. refugee agency said on Friday that nearly 100,000 people had already been displaced into shelters in Lebanon. That estimate may rise sharply, as the population of Beirut's southern suburbs that Israel has said should be entirely emptied numbers in the hundreds of thousands.
The U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk criticised Israel's evacuation orders, saying they raised serious concern under international humanitarian law.
Israel has sent tanks and troops deeper into southern Lebanon and they were visible on Thursday operating in a bombed-out village near the frontier with smoke rising in the distance.
Hundreds of Israeli troops were also seen on Thursday setting up fortifications on the Israeli side of the border fence.
HEZBOLLAH TELLS ISRAELIS TO FLEE THEIR HOMES
Hezbollah, in a message published in Hebrew on its Telegram channel early on Friday, warned Israelis to leave towns within 5 km (3 miles) of the border.
"Your military's aggression against Lebanese sovereignty and safe citizens, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the expulsion campaign it is carrying out will not go unchallenged," Hezbollah said.
During fighting between Hezbollah and Israel in 2024, tens of thousands of Israelis were evacuated from towns in the border area but many have since returned. Israeli officials have previously said there are no plans to remove them for now.
There have been no reported fatalities in Israel as a result of Hezbollah attacks.
(Reporting by Abdelaziz Boumzar and Khalil Ashawi in Beirut; Steven Scheer, Maayan Lubell and Pesha Magid in Jerusalem; Hatem Maher and Nayera Abdallah in Cairo; Jana Choukeir in Dubai; Writing by Tom Perry and Angus McDowall; Editing by Michael Perry and Philippa Fletcher)
