Israel pounds ancient city of Tyre on Lebanese coast

Tyre, Lebanon: Israeli jets have struck multiple buildings in Lebanon’s southern coastal city of Tyre, sending up large clouds of black smoke, while Hezbollah confirmed that a top official widely expected to be the militant group’s next leader had been killed in an Israeli strike.

Tyre, a provincial capital, had largely been spared, but strikes in and around the city have intensified recently.

Smoke rises from buildings hit in Israeli airstrikes in Tyre, Lebanon.Credit: AP

The city, which dates to the Bronze Age, about 80 kilometres south of Beirut, is known for its pristine beaches, ancient harbour and imposing Roman ruins and hippodrome, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is among Lebanon’s largest cities and a vibrant metropolis popular with tourists.

The buildings struck overnight were between several heritage sites, including the hippodrome and a cluster of seaside sites associated with the ancient Phoenicians and the Crusaders.

The Israeli military issued evacuation warnings a couple of hours before the strikes for dozens of buildings in the heart of the city. It told residents to move north of the Awali River, dozens of kilometres to the north.

Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee said on the platform X there were Hezbollah assets in the area, without elaborating or providing evidence.

A file photo of Tyre’s ruins, which date back to the Phoenician period, according to UNESCO.Credit: UNESCO

The Shiite Muslim Hezbollah has a strong presence in Tyre, and its legislators are members of the group’s political party or its allies. But the city is also home to civilians with no ties to the group, including a sizeable Christian community.

Civil Defence first responders warned residents through loudspeakers to evacuate and helped older adults and others who had difficulty leaving. Ali Safieddine, the head of the Civil Defence, told Associated Press there were no casualties.

Dr Wissam Ghazal, a health official in Tyre, said the strikes hit six buildings, flattening four of them, about 2½ hours after the evacuation warnings. People displaced by the strikes were seen in parks and sitting on the sides of nearby roads.

Mortada Mhanna, the head of Tyre’s disaster management unit, told AP that although many people had fled, thousands of residents and others displaced from other areas remained. Many people, including hundreds of families, previously had fled villages in south Lebanon to seek refuge in shelters in Tyre.

An estimated 15,000 people remain in the city out of a pre-war population of about 100,000, Mhanna said.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that a separate Israeli strike on the nearby town of Maarakeh killed three people.

Israel also launched strikes on the Syrian capital Damascus and a military site near the western city of Homs on Thursday, the Syrian Defence Ministry said, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken toured the region pushing for a halt to fighting.

The Israeli strikes targeted the central Damascus neighbourhood of Kafr Sousa and a military site in the Homs countryside, killing one soldier and injuring seven other people, the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said the strikes caused “material damage”, but did not elaborate. Earlier in the day, Syrian state media said explosions were heard in Damascus after Israel struck a residential building in Kafr Sousa.

Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iranian-linked targets in Syria for years, but it has ramped up raids since last year’s October 7 attack on Israel by Palestinian militant group Hamas, which sparked the Gaza war.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, fired more rockets into Israel, including two that prompted air-raid sirens in Tel Aviv before being intercepted. A cloud of smoke could be seen above the hotel where Blinken was staying on his latest visit to the region to try to renew ceasefire talks.

Earlier, the Israeli military said another four “projectiles” crossed from Lebanon into Israel, with two intercepted and one falling in open land. There were no immediate reports of injuries, the military said.

And Hezbollah confirmed that top official Hashem Safieddine had been killed, a day after Israel said it had killed him in a strike earlier this month in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Safieddine, a powerful cleric within the party ranks, had been expected to succeed Hassan Nasrallah, one of the group’s founders, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike last month.

Hezbollah said Safieddine had “joined his brother, our most noble and precious martyr”, Nasrallah.

The militant group began firing rockets, missiles and drones into Israel, drawing retaliatory airstrikes, after Hamas’ October 7 attack.

All-out war erupted in Lebanon last month, and Israeli strikes killed Nasrallah and most of his senior commanders. Israeli ground forces invaded southern Lebanon at the start of October.

Journalists under fire

The Israeli army has accused six Al Jazeera journalists covering the war in Gaza of being current or former paid fighters for Palestinian militant groups. Al Jazeera rejected the claims.

Israel cited documents it purportedly found in Gaza, and other intelligence gathered, in making the accusations against the journalists, all of whom are Palestinian men. It accused Anas al-Sharif, Hossam Shabat, Ismael Abu Omar and Talal Arrouki of ties to Hamas. Ashraf Saraj and Alaa Salameh were accused of ties to Islamic Jihad.

Al Jazeera said the accusations were “fabricated” and “part of a wider pattern of hostility” towards the pan-Arab network. The network said the claims were “a blatant attempt to silence the few remaining journalists in the region, thereby obscuring the harsh realities of the war from audiences worldwide”.

A woman in her hair salon which was destroyed when an Israeli airstrike hit several buildings in Tyre on Wednesday.Credit: AP

The Associated Press has been unable to independently verify the authenticity of the documents Israel posted online to support its claims.

Al Jazeera is based in the energy-rich nation of Qatar, where many senior Hamas officials are based. The Arab country, which also funds Al Jazeera, has been a key player in Gaza ceasefire negotiations, along with the US and Egypt.

The six men have held various roles, according to documents Israel citedx, including sniper, infantry soldier, fighter, captain, training co-ordinator and “propaganda”.

The Committee to Protect Journalists released a statement that was critical of Israel, and said Israel “has repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence”.

In July, after an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City killed two Al Jazeera journalists, including Ismail Al Ghoul, Israel “produced a similar document, which contained contradictory information, showing that Al Ghoul, born in 1997, received a Hamas military ranking in 2007 – when he would have been 10 years old”, the committee said in its statement.

On Wednesday night, the pan-Arab TV channel Al Mayadeen in Lebanon, which is politically allied with Hezbollah, said the Israeli military struck its office building on the outskirts of Beirut’s southern suburbs.

“Al Mayadeen holds the Israeli occupation accountable for the attack on a known media office for a known media outlet,” the TV station said. It added that the office had been evacuated. The Israeli army did not issue a warning before the strike.

Heavy tolls

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said 28 people were killed and 139 wounded in 24 hours, raising the death toll since the conflict began last year to 2574, with 12,001 people wounded. The fighting has driven 1.2 million people from their homes, including more than 400,000 children, according to the UN children’s agency UNICEF.

Rescuers recovered the bodies of a mother and her seven-year-old child two days after an Israeli airstrike hit a densely populated slum near Beirut’s main public hospital, Saad al-Ahmar, the commander of the Civil Defence’s southern district fire and rescue unit, said.

Monday’s strike killed at least 18 people, including four children, and wounded more than 60 others, the Health Ministry said. It also damaged the nearby Rafik Hariri University Hospital, Beirut’s primary public medical facility.

The Israeli military said it had targeted a Hezbollah site, and stated the hospital itself was not the intended target.

On the Israeli side, Hezbollah attacks have killed about 60 people, half of them soldiers. Near-daily rocket barrages have emptied communities across northern Israel, displacing about 60,000 people. In recent weeks, Hezbollah has extended its range, launching scores of rockets daily and regularly targeting the northern Israeli city of Haifa. Most rockets are intercepted or fall in open areas.

In Gaza, the Israeli military has pressed ahead with a major operation in the northern part of the territory, where the UN’s humanitarian office has said Israel has severely restricted aid deliveries. During his visit to the region, Blinken reiterated a warning that hindering aid could force the US to scale back crucial military support for Israel.

Israel’s army said it had arrested about 150 suspected Palestinian militants after separating men from women and children evacuees, while about 20,000 people left Jabalia, a refugee camp that has turned into a densely built neighbourhood over the decades.

The military released drone footage showing thousands of people walking past bombed buildings. Over the past few days, several Palestinians said the Israeli military forced them to leave.

The UN estimates 60,000 people have fled the far north of Gaza southwards over more than a two-week period.

AP

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