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'Total Panic' Across Beirut as Israel Issues 'Unprecedented' Mass Evacuation Warning
"They want civil chaos in this country," said one journalist of Israel's military plans in Lebanon.
Mar 05, 2026
The Israeli military on Thursday issued what the Times of Israel described as an "unprecedented" evacuation warning to residents in Beirut's southern suburbs ahead of planned strikes against Hezbollah.
According to the Times of Israel, the warning "covers four major neighborhoods in the southern suburbs" of the Lebanese capital, and represents a marked difference from past evacuation warnings that have typically covered specific locations where Israel intended to launch strikes.
In the warning, Israeli Army spokesman Col. Avichay Adraee told residents of the four neighborhoods to "save your lives and evacuate your homes immediately," and warned that any movement southward toward the Israeli border "may endanger your lives."
Israel has deployed soldiers and conducted airstrikes in Lebanon as its military also joins the US in attacking Iran in an operation they began late last week. The US and Israeli attacks have led to a widening conflict in the region, with the Iran-backed Hezbollah launching missiles at Israel in retaliation.
Maha Yahya, director of the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, said in a Thursday social media post that the Israeli warning has caused "total panic across the city," as the area being targeted by Israel is home to "at least a half million people."
Lebansese-Australian journalist Rania Abouzeid similarly described "widespread panic" across Beirut in the wake of the order.
"Traffic is choked, people rushing to leave and head north," Abouzeid wrote. "Drones in the air. WhatsApp messages urging people to crack windows open to avoid shattering from expected blasts."
Ariel Oseran, senior Middle East correspondent for i24News English, posted video on social media showing packed streets filled with cars of people trying to escape the impending Israeli attack.
Residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs seen fleeing shortly after the IDF issued an evacuation warning for the entire area. https://t.co/V34p1mhCW6 pic.twitter.com/LCQfOxO59J
— Ariel Oseran أريئل أوسيران (@ariel_oseran) March 5, 2026
Mohamad Safa, executive director of PVA Patriotic Vision, an international multilateral organization with special consultative status at the United Nations Economic and Social Council, said that the evacuation order was making a dangerous situation on the ground in Lebanon even worse.
"Our teams have been on the ground assisting [internally displaced peoples] since day one," he wrote. "The humanitarian situation in Lebanon is going from bad to worse. Shelters are overcrowded, and there are no apartments available for rent. Emergency relief is insufficient. People are sleeping on the ground without blankets or mattresses in the bitter cold."
Journalist Rania Khalek of BreakThrough News said that Israel "is trying to empty out huge portions of the country," and she speculated that it was being done in a way to maximize chaos on the ground.
"The Israelis are telling Lebanese they are displacing from Shia neighborhoods to take roads to what will inevitably land them in Christian and Sunni areas," she wrote. "They want civil chaos in this country."
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said that his agency "has opened emergency shelters for displaced people—Palestine refugees, Lebanese, and Syrians alike" in the wake of Israel's evacuation warning.
Lazzarini also emphasized that "Lebanon needs peace, not more destruction, displacement, and death."
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Israel Gives 'Mass Expulsion Order' to Civilians as It Invades Southern Lebanon
As it pushes further into Lebanon, Israel ordered around 200,000 people living south of the Litani River to "immediately" flee.
Mar 04, 2026
Israel ordered residents in southern Lebanon to "immediately" leave their homes as it advanced troops further into the country on Wednesday, prompting "serious concern" from the United Nations as its assault on the country ramps up.
"Residents of southern Lebanon—you must move immediately to areas north of the Litani River," Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted in Arabic on X as Israel escalated a campaign of airstrikes and moved troops into several villages.
The region south of the Litani River spans hundreds of square kilometers and makes up about 9% of Lebanon's total territory, according to the Associated Press.
Around 200,000 people live in the area south of the river, which has served as the beginning of a buffer zone between Israel and Hezbollah since Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2006 as part of United Nations Resolution 1701.
On Monday, Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz said that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "have approved for the military to advance and seize additional controlling areas in Lebanon and to defend the border settlements from there."
According to Nora Ingdal, Save the Children’s Country Director for Lebanon, evacuation orders given by Israel as it entered villages in the past three days have created a situation of "pure chaos" for civilians forced to flee their homes.
Lebanon's Ministry of Social Affairs reported that about 58,000 people, including an estimated 16,000 children, had already been displaced as of Tuesday.
"Our team is hearing cases of children across Lebanon sleeping in cars, on cold pavements, and in partially damaged classrooms with cracks in the walls, while parents are sitting on the side of the streets crying, exhausted from little sleep after being unable to get into proper shelters with their children," Ingdal said.
Sana Kawtharani, a community health educator for Doctors Without Borders, described the impossible choice that over 12,000 people had to make after being ordered to leave the town of Sarafand on Tuesday, after having sought shelter there earlier.
"We know how hard it is to leave our home, our people, our villages, and our memories," Kawtharani said. "Around us in the neighborhood, some were forced to leave because they have children and elderly who are terrified by the sound of Israeli shelling."
"They carried what they could and left in cars, not knowing where they were going," she said. "There are children, the elderly, and the sick stuck on the road in very harsh conditions."
Israeli attacks in Lebanon since 2023 have killed more than 4,000 people and injured more than 16,000, according to the Lebanese health ministry, which says most of the victims have been civilians. More than 370 have been killed since a ceasefire in November 2024.
"This war began 15 months ago, and until today, it hasn't stopped," Kawtharani said. "Every day there is shelling, despite everything we hear about a ceasefire, but this has not been implemented on the ground."
Israel’s evacuation order for all of southern Lebanon came following an intensification of airstrikes overnight around Beirut the previous evening, which killed at least 12 people according to state media.
On Tuesday, Israel also reportedly carried out another "double-tap" strike in the Tyre district of southern Lebanon, killing three paramedics with the World Health Organization (WHO) and injuring six more who were in the process of helping others wounded in a previous strike.
Though Lebanon was already being struck by Israel on a near-daily basis despite the 2024 ceasefire, hostilities exploded over the weekend following Israel and the United States' attack on Iran, sparking retaliatory strikes on Israel from the Iranian-aligned militia Hezbollah.
According to Middle East Eye, Israel had authorized a barrage of strikes on Lebanon even before the first retaliatory rockets and drones were fired by Hezbollah following the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday.
Israel has not reported any deaths from Hezbollah's attacks, though two soldiers sustained moderate injuries on Wednesday from anti-tank fire in southern Lebanon.
According to Lebanese authorities, Israeli strikes on dozens of sites across the country have killed at least 72 people and wounded 437 as of Wednesday.
Lebanese media reported on Wednesday that Israeli troops have pushed into the town of Khiam, which is roughly six kilometers from Israel’s border, marking their furthest advance into the country since the war broke out in 2024.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the peacekeeping force that has operated in southern Lebanon for nearly 50 years, said on Wednesday that it had “serious concern” about Israel’s order “demanding evacuation of the civilian population from UNIFIL’s area of operations to north of the Litani River.”
UNIFIL said on Wednesday that “peacekeepers observed today several [Israel Defense Forces] movements and military activities, including near El Khiam, Beit Lif, Yaroun, Houla, Kfar Kila, Kherbeh, and Kfar Shouba. All of these are happening while Israeli airstrikes and other air activities continue.”
It said these actions "not only violate Resolution 1701, but also Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity."
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With Global Attention on Venezuela, Israel Intensifies Assault on Gaza, Lebanon
Israeli forces reported blew up a 5-year-old girl and wounded two other children a day after fatally shooting a 15-year-old boy in Gaza.
Jan 05, 2026
With the world captivated by and concerned over the Trump administration's weekend abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Israel bombed the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, continuing its devastating US-backed response to the Hamas-led October 2023 attack.
In Gaza, where Israel faces widespread accusations of genocide, an Israeli strike on Monday "hit a tent housing displaced people, killing a 5-year-old girl and her uncle and wounding two other children," the Associated Press reported, citing officials at Nasser Hospital. "Family members wept over the bodies as they were brought to the hospital."
The Israel Defense Forces used one of its common claims for when it kills civilians. According to the AP, the IDF said that it struck a Hamas militant who planned an imminent attack on Israeli troops in Gaza, the strike complied with the ceasefire agreement, and it was conducted in a targeted way to limit civilian harm.
The tent strike in the Muwasi area northwest of Khan Younis came a day after Israeli forces shot and killed at least three Palestinians in that city on Sunday. According to Reuters, "Medics reported that the dead included a 15‑year‑old boy, a fisherman killed outside areas still occupied by Israel in the enclave, and a third man who was shot and killed east of the city in areas under Israeli control."
Israel has killed at least 422 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 1,189 since reaching the ceasefire deal with Hamas three months ago. The overall death toll in the strip has climbed to at least 71,388, with another 171,269 people injured, according to local health officials. Global experts warn the true counts are likely far higher.
Meanwhile, according to Al Jazeera, journalists on the ground in the illegally occupied Palestinian territory observed that the IDF "has spent the past 24 hours expanding the so-called 'yellow line' in eastern Gaza," or the boundary behind which Israeli forces officially withdrew as part of the October deal.
Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud reported from Gaza City:
The ongoing Israeli attacks on the ground, the expansion of the "yellow line," are meant to eat up more of the territory across the eastern part, really shrinking the total area where people are sheltering.
Everyone is cramped here. The population here not just doubled but tripled in many of the neighborhoods, given the fact that none of these people is able to go back to their neighborhoods. We're talking about Zeitoun, Shujayea, as well as Tuffah.
It was not until the past few minutes that the sounds of hums, the drones buzzing, faded away, but it had been going on for the past night and all of yesterday. Ongoing explosions that could be heard clearly from here.
Mahmoud also reported that "there's nothing on the ground other than the headlines we've been reading over the past couple of days, the expectation now that within days the Rafah crossing is going to open and allow for movement in and out of Gaza. So far, we know the Israeli military is pushing for Rafah to be just a one-way exit."
Throughout the Israeli assault, far-right officials in Israel have ramped up calls to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its Palestinian population and recolonize the territory. There has also been a surge in violence from Israeli settlers and soldiers against Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank over the past two years, as well as renewed settlement-building efforts there.
Laila Al-Arian, an American journalist and executive producer for Al Jazeera's documentary series "Fault Lines," said on social media Sunday, "With eyes on Venezuela, Israel is bombing Gaza and escalating its assault on the West Bank."
In November 2024, nearly a year before the ceasefire agreement in Hamas, Israel struck a deal with the Lebanese political and paramilitary group Hezbollah—and, since then, as with Gaza, has repeatedly violated it.
Israel launched strikes on eastern and southern Lebanon on Monday after an IDF spokesperson said the military would target alleged Hezbollah sites in Kfar Hatta and Ain el-Tineh, and Hamas sites in Annan and al-Manara.
Al Jazeera reported that "Lebanon's Health Ministry said a drone strike on a car in the southern village of Braikeh earlier Monday wounded two people. The Israeli military said the strike targeted two Hezbollah members."
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