The IDF, around 6:30 a.m. on Monday, initiated a fifth round of massive air strikes on Hezbollah, especially in southern Lebanon, including further from the border than in some prior cases.
IDF Chief Spokesman Daniel Hagari, for the first time, issued a broad warning to the general public in southern Lebanon that if they have not already moved away from houses and other civilian buildings where they live and reside – but where Hezbollah has stored rockets or undertaken other actions – now they must leave those areas.
Hagari’s warning was unusual and different from mass evacuation warnings issued to date in Gaza.
On the one hand, it was the first sort of mass evacuation warning to southern Lebanese regarding areas where Hezbollah is operating.
Continuing in that vein, hundreds of thousands of southern Lebanese civilians have evacuated areas that the IDF has been attacking already for several months.
So, a warning will be issued to those who have not yet evacuated.
Not a complete evacuation
On the other hand, the IDF is not telling southern Lebanese civilians that they must completely leave all of southern Lebanon to move to some other further away specified area.
It was not clear where the IDF would suggest these evacuating civilians should go permanently if, in fact, their homes get bombed due to holding terror assets.
Also, it was not like a Gaza evacuation, as Hagari did not yet suggest that the IDF would be invading with ground troops, but more than it would be striking more intensely from the air, including at civilian locations where terror assets have been located.
To illustrate his point, Hagari displayed an example of a southern Lebanese civilian location where the IDF, a few weeks ago, watched Hezbollah knock down some of the walls in order to set up a camouflaged civilian location for the firing of a Russian-made DR-4 cruise missile, with hundreds of kilos of explosives.
Hagari said that the cruise missile, a much larger danger than typical Hezbollah rockets because it flies lower and faster in a line-drive type fashion as opposed to rockets, which fly slower and in an arch trajectory, had been smuggled to Hezbollah via Syria.
Next, Hagari showed the IDF watching Hezbollah terrorists exiting the area.
Finally, he showed the IDF blowing up both the cruise missile and the civilian location where it was hidden, along with the Hezbollah terrorists.
One of the purposes of Hagari’s public statements, which have subtitles in Arabic, was to broaden the warning to southern Lebanese civilians to leave such areas, while another purpose was to preempt Western criticism for targeting civilian areas, to explain the IDF’s justification.
Under international law, civilian areas can be targeted if warnings are provided and if those areas have been used for military purposes.
In addition, the IDF said that it had shot down attempted aerial attacks from Iraq around 4:00 a.m.
Comments are closed.