An Israeli military warning to evacuate nearly all of southern Beirut triggered scenes of chaos and panic Thursday evening as tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of residents jammed roads trying to flee the area.
“I saw people running out of their buildings barefoot,” a flower-shop owner named Hussein told CNN.
Family chat groups filled with desperate calls for relatives to run. But escape was hindered by grid-locked traffic and the challenge of evacuating the elderly and immobilized.
Explosions began rocking southern Beirut after nightfall and have continued into the pre-dawn hours.
CNN’s Matthew Chance was caught up in the rushed exodus.
CNN team flees south Beirut after warning of Israeli airstrike
Beirut’s southern suburbs are still badly scarred from Israel’s relentless bombardment during a 66-day war in 2024 against the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah.
But Thursday’s evacuation order for entire neighborhoods believed to house more than half a million people raised fears to a new level. In the past, Israeli military warnings tended to focus on a single building prior to an airstrike.
The terror was exacerbated by a video statement from Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Thursday.
Khan Younis is the city in southern Gaza that was largely flattened during Israel’s war against Hamas. Israeli military officials acknowledged that about 70,000 Palestinians were killed in the war.
“Israelis seek to recreate the Gaza example in the (southern) suburbs,” wrote Michael Young, senior editor at the Carnegie Middle East Center.
Though Israel and Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire in 2024, Israeli warplanes have continued to bomb the Lebanese south and the Bekaa Valley on an almost daily basis since.
Fighting dramatically intensified on Monday, when Hezbollah announced it fired rockets into Israel, hours after the militia’s leader Naim Qassem vowed to “fulfill our duty in confronting the aggression” following the joint Israeli-US attack that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Hezbollah’s rocket attacks have triggered a backlash across Lebanese society and from the Lebanese government. In a first, the president announced a ban on Hezbollah’s military and security operations. And yet the US-backed Lebanese Army has been unable to stop the militia from firing on targets in northern Israel, as well as upon Israeli troops mounting incursions into southern Lebanon.
In the hours after the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of southern Beirut, the Lebanese government announced it was withdrawing visa-free travel for visiting Iranians.
