SIDON: Israel carried out new strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs and again ordered residents of vast parts of southern Lebanon to evacuate, as more than a million people have been displaced across the country.

Early on Tuesday morning Israeli aircraft bombed two neighbourhoods of Beirut’s southern suburbs, state media said, and also struck Doha Aramoun, south of the capital, wounding an Ethiopian woman.

Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war on March 2 when Hezbollah launched rockets towards Israel in response to US-Israeli strikes that killed Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Israel has responded with intense strikes in multiple Lebanese regions and some ground operations in the south.

Israel confirmed the Tuesday strikes, saying it was targeting Hezbollah, as it has since the start of the conflict, a day after announcing the start of “limited” ground operations in southern Lebanon.

Israeli strikes have killed 886 people, including 67 women and 111 children, since March 2, Lebanon’s health ministry said on Monday, adding that 2,141 others have been wounded. At the same time, the Israeli military renewed its call for residents to evacuate a region stretching more than 40 kilometres from the Lebanon-Israel border.

Around 14 percent of Lebanese territory is under Israeli evacuation warnings, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Lebanese authorities said more than one million people had registered as displaced since March 2 — more than a sixth of the country’s population — with more than 130,000 people staying in upwards of 600 official shelters.

These displaced people “will not return to their homes” in the south as long as the security of residents in northern Israel is not guaranteed, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said this week.

Published in Dawn, March 18th, 2026