BEIRUT/JERUSALEM, March 4 (Reuters) - Israel ordered on Wednesday the evacuation of a swathe of southern Lebanon, including the city of Tyre, telling residents to move north of the Litani River on a third day of full-blown hostilities with the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Lebanon has emerged as a major theatre in the war that has engulfed the region since the United States and Israel attacked Iran. Hezbollah launched drones and rockets at Israel on Monday, prompting Israeli retaliation that has killed dozens of people.
A day after Israel's defence minister said he had authorised the military to advance and take control of additional positions in Lebanon, Lebanon's state National News Agency reported that Israeli soldiers had entered the town of Khiyam, some 5 km (3 miles) from the border.
The Israeli military declined to comment on any specific new deployments in Lebanon.
A spokesperson said the military was "positioning troops a little farther (into Lebanon) than we had before, to prevent any attacks against the northern communities (in Israel) due to the situational assessment in Lebanon".
Israel has kept troops at several locations inside Lebanese territory since a war with Hezbollah in 2024.
While Israel has already warned residents to leave dozens of villages in the south, Wednesday's evacuation order was the broadest yet, covering an area between the border and the Litani River, which meets the Mediterranean some 10 km (6 miles) north of Tyre, a historic port city and one of Lebanon's biggest.
DOZENS KILLED SINCE MONDAY
Israeli strikes have killed dozens of people in Lebanon since Monday, according to the Lebanese health ministry. Many thousands of Lebanese have already fled their homes.
There have been no reported fatalities in Israel as a result of attacks by Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim group established by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in 1982.
The war in the Middle East spread to Lebanon on Monday, when Hezbollah opened fire, saying it aimed to avenge the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday in the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran.
An Israeli airstrike hit a four-storey building in the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbeck on Wednesday, killing six people and wounding 15, the Lebanese National News Agency reported, adding that rescue workers were still searching for missing people.
Hezbollah announced several attacks on Wednesday, including one using what it described as a precision-guided missile that it said was fired at a military facility in northern Israel.
Israeli military spokesperson Effie Defrin said the Israeli military had attacked more than 250 Hezbollah targets throughout Lebanon over a 48-hour period.
(Reporting by Tala Ramadan, Jana Choukeir, Enas Alashray and Ahmed Tolba; Steven Scheer and Rami Ayyub in Jerusalem; Maya Gebeily in Beirut; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Saad Sayeed, Alex Richardson and Gareth Jones)
