IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari on Monday afternoon warned Lebanese civilians to evacuate Bekaa Valley areas where Hezbollah has hidden rockets, drones, and long range strategic weapons.
Hezbollah has many longer range strategic weapons in the Bekaa Valley because it is farther from the border with Israel, making collecting intelligence about the weapons and attacking them more difficult.
While the impact of Hagari’s warning may be to cause a mass evacuation from the area, the IDF did not say that the whole area must be evacuated, rather focusing on residences where weapons are hidden.
However, given that the IDF has accused Hezbollah of hiding weapons in every three to five houses in parts of Lebanon, the impact of Hagari’s threat could be a mass evacuation.
Further, Hagari pushed back on global criticism of rising Lebanese casualties and the IDF decision to target civilian areas, saying that the videos of large explosions circulating on social media prove that Hezbollah hid powerful weapons in civilian areas which caused secondary explosions.
Strikes in the Bekaa Valley
The IDF spokesman specifically showed a video of an attack of a structure at Jabal al-Butum with what appeared to be tremendous secondary explosions not consistent with if the IDF had bombed a house which did not contain weapons.
Moreover, he said this third wave of attacks was to stop what the military viewed as an imminent decision by Hezbollah to fire on Israel using some of its strategic weapons in the Bekaa Valley area.
Hagari did not change the status of home front restrictions which currently only apply to the Haifa Bay Area and northward.
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