Hundreds had gathered. Salespeople from local shops stood on the pavements. Food delivery drivers had stopped, still straddling their motorbikes. They were peering across the roundabout, wondering which building would be hit. A woman in a car drove up and asked what was going on. There was an air strike warning, came the reply. “Ya Allah,” she moaned. “Oh my God.”
The warning — one of dozens this week — was posted on X at 9.39am on Friday. “To all residents in the southern suburb area, specifically in the buildings specified in the attached maps and the buildings adjacent to them ... You are located near Hizbullah facilities and interests, against which the IDF will operate in the near future,” said the account of the Israeli military Arabic language spokesman, Avichay Adraee. “For your safety and the safety of your family members, you must evacuate these buildings and those adjacent to them immediately and stay away from them for a distance of no less than 500 metres.”
The target was in Chiyah. It was near the busy Tayouneh junction, where a civil defence station is located. Though a map was posted alongside the evacuation warning, people were still confused about what would be hit and how far away they should stand.
As some of the crowd filmed and took selfies, a Lebanese army fuel truck drove up, prompting panic. People shouted at the driver, telling him to move on. They worried his cargo would explode when the strike took place. The driver himself seemed bewildered, asking why the road was blocked. Eventually, he left.
“They are late today, I want to go, usually it’s faster,” complained a man, as the wait continued. His comments underscored the strange new reality of living in greater Beirut, where Israeli forces struck about 30 targets in just 48 hours this week, with strikes carrying on since. Between 6pm Wednesday and 6pm Thursday, Lebanese authorities recorded 113 strikes nationwide, bringing the total number since October 2023 close to 13,000, they say.
What Israel is targeting is not always certain, and attacks on medical workers and civilian infrastructure have prompted accusations of war crimes. On Thursday, an Israeli attack hit a civil defence centre near the eastern city of Baalbek, where 12 people were killed, the regional governor said.
A taxi driver from Beirut’s southern suburbs, whose family home was destroyed by an air strike two weeks ago, said he believes 90 per cent of Israeli targets there are not associated with Hizbullah at all. The Israeli military did not specifically respond to a request for information about their target in Chiyah on Friday morning, though in Beirut’s broader southern suburbs it said it struck targets including weapons storage facilities, a command centre, and “additional [Hizbullah] terrorist infrastructure sites”.
More than half of Israeli air strikes come without evacuation warnings, a Sunday Times analysis recently found.
When warnings come, there can be problems. An Amnesty International analysis, made public on October 10th, found the maps provided can be “misleading”, with highlighted areas showing a much smaller range than the 500m radius the Israeli military advises people to evacuate beyond. At least one strike took place less than 30 minutes after a warning was issued, it noted.
Many warnings come in the middle of the night, such as the three strikes that hit Beirut’s southern suburbs shortly after a 3.23am warning on Thursday. Sometimes, instead of seeing the warning, locals first hear gunfire: an instruction to neighbours to evacuate if they need to.
Some Hizbullah members turned up at the Chiyah site, with one shooting towards the sky, pushing the crowd back towards safety.
In the end, the Israeli missile struck less than an hour after Friday’s evacuation. Thick smoke rose into the air, another building toppled to the ground and the crowd dispersed to carry on with their day in a city at war.
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