Israel Strikes Beirut, Orders Evacuation of Tyre Area
After striking Beirut's southern suburbs, the IDF ordered residents of parts of Tyre district to evacuate, with Israeli officials saying the war on Hezbollah is far from over.
- An Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs, known as the Dahieh, killed two people and wounded 11, the first hit on the Lebanese capital since the truce was renewed last week.
- The same day, the IDF ordered the evacuation of four residential zones in the Tyre district, citing alleged ceasefire violations.
- Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said operations against Hezbollah would continue, and that Beirut would be struck if the group attacks Israel.
- Lebanon's health ministry said the death toll from Israeli strikes in the country has passed 3,600.
Israeli warplanes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sunday, the first strike on the Lebanese capital since the truce was renewed a week earlier, and by the following day, June 8, the military had ordered residents of parts of the Tyre district in the south to leave their homes. For Serbia, which follows the entire Middle Eastern front through the price of oil and the fate of Europe’s energy balance, the Lebanese track is no side note: it confirms that this war has more than one front, and that ceasefires here collapse faster than they are signed.
The strike on the Dahieh, the broad belt of southern suburbs widely seen as a Hezbollah stronghold, killed two people and wounded eleven. The IDF said it had targeted the group’s infrastructure after it fired projectiles toward northern Israel. With that, a fragile lull established only a week earlier was broken in a way each side reads as the other’s fault, while ordinary residents are once again left exposed.
What does the Tyre evacuation order actually mean?
On June 8 the Israeli military issued an order to evacuate four residential zones in the Tyre district, the ancient coastal city in southern Lebanon, citing alleged ceasefire violations on the Lebanese side. Orders of this kind, posted to social media and the press, function in practice as a warning of imminent attack: residents are given a short window to leave the marked blocks before the air force moves in. For tens of thousands of people, that means a fresh exodus from homes many had returned to only days before.
The geography here is a message in itself. Beirut in the north and Tyre in the south mark two points on the same line of pressure, along which Israel hits both the symbolic heart of Hezbollah in the capital and its traditional base in the south at the same time. The Lebanese state, already drained by years of economic crisis, watches its territory turn into a battleground where the decisions are made by armed groups and foreign militaries rather than by its own institutions.
Figures from Lebanon’s health ministry put the scale of a conflict long overshadowed by the Iranian track into perspective. By their count, the death toll from Israeli strikes in Lebanon has now passed 3,600. Behind each of those numbers lies a simple fact: the Lebanese front, however much it looks like a by-product of the wider crisis, is on its own one of the deadliest in the Middle East.
Why is Israel saying the war is not over?
The clearest political signal came from Israel’s defence ministry. Minister Israel Katz said Israel would press on with operations against Hezbollah and would strike Beirut each time the group attacks Israeli territory. With that, Tel Aviv pre-emptively rejected any reading of last week’s truce as the end of the conflict, and set a condition that keeps the Lebanese side under permanent threat of retaliation.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compressed that logic into a single line, saying Israel would respond to any attack on its territory. Such a formula turns the truce into a temporary lull conditioned on the other side’s behaviour rather than a durable settlement backed by guarantees. For an observer in Belgrade, who in the same days has been reading about Israeli strikes on Iran and escalation in the Gulf, the Lebanese front shows how one crisis branches into several parallel wars that feed off one another.
It is worth keeping this track separate from the Iranian escalation. Where the Israel-Iran axis is fought with long-range missiles and strikes on military infrastructure, the Lebanese front is close, territorial and densely populated, with evacuation orders that hit civilians directly. That is precisely why the danger of an accidental tripwire is greatest here: one Hezbollah rocket too many, or one Israeli strike deeper than expected, could turn a local exchange into a wide war.
And you: do you believe a truce that breaks down within a week even deserves the name, or is it merely a pause between two waves of strikes?
