By Liam Stack and Christina Goldbaum

JERUSALEM – Israel’s military warned residents of the city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon to evacuate Wednesday (30), as it appeared to deepen its campaign against Hezbollah strongholds beyond the country’s south.

Baalbek, which had a population of roughly 80,000 people before Israel stepped up its attacks on the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah this month, is an important urban centre in the Bekaa Valley and is famed for its towering Roman ruins. It is also well known as a city where Hezbollah holds sway.

But unlike other places where the group enjoys support, the city of Baalbek has largely been spared Israeli bombardment. In a signal that Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah may be widening, Baalbek was one of two urban areas to be targeted by Israel in recent days after largely escaping the brunt of the war.

The warnings came amid renewed diplomatic efforts to reach a truce, according to three officials briefed on the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

No agreement has been reached, but Israel is pushing for an arrangement in which Hezbollah would be given several weeks to withdraw its forces from the Israel-Lebanon border, allowing Lebanon’s official army — which had been side-lined by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon over the past two decades — to fill the void, according to two of the officials.

Israel also wants to be guaranteed the right to invade Lebanon if Hezbollah does not withdraw fast enough, the two officials said.

In a statement posted online Wednesday, Avichay Adraee, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson, posted a map showing Baalbek and two neighbouring towns, Ain Bourday and Douris, as part of a danger zone marked in red, with three evacuation routes authorized by the Israeli military.

“The IDF will act forcefully against Hezbollah interests within your city and villages and does not intend to harm you,” Adraee said, referring to the Israel Defence Forces. “For your safety, you must evacuate your homes immediately and move outside the city and villages.”

The evacuation warning comes two days after Israeli airstrikes killed at least 60 people in the Bekaa district, which includes the city and its rural hinterland, Lebanese officials said. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said at least 58 others were injured in the attacks.

The farmland and villages around the city of Baalbek have been hit by airstrikes numerous times in recent weeks, leaving many of the small towns largely deserted. Ibrahim Bayan, a deputy to the mayor in Baalbek, said earlier this month that about two-thirds of the residents in the city had left their homes out of fear.

As people in Baalbek received the evacuation warnings by text message late Wednesday morning, a sense of alarm seized the streets of the city, Bayan said.

“People are panicking,” Bayan said. “They are running around and bumping into each other like chickens with their heads cut off. They have no idea what to do, where to go.”

Within minutes, the roads filled with residents who threw their valuables into plastic bags locked their houses and pulled metal grates over their shop doors, he said. As people crammed into cars, they shouted to each other to determine the safest way to leave the city.

Others opted to remain in the city, unsure where they would go or how they would get there.

Baalbek is in one of Lebanon’s most underdeveloped regions and many residents do not have the means to flee, some said.

“Gas stations are closed, but even if they were open, people don’t have money to fill up their cars’ tanks,” said Mahmoud Zikra, a resident of Baalbek who remained in his home. “There are no vans or taxis — even if they were available no one can afford to hire them.”

The warning from Israel’s military included a village in Baalbek’s southern suburbs that connects the city to the region’s main highway, cutting off a standard route for residents trying to leave the valley.

Hezbollah’s new leader, Naim Qassem, gave his first televised speech Wednesday afternoon, a day after he was named to the position. He replaced Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s long-time leader, whom Israel assassinated last month.

In the speech, which was delivered as the group fired a barrage of rockets into northern Israel, Qassem effusively praised his predecessor, and said Hezbollah “will continue to implement the war strategy he developed”.

Fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah continued elsewhere in Lebanon. On Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had struck more than 100 sites across the country in the previous 24 hours, including a rocket launch site used in a deadly strike on the Israeli town of Ma’alot-Tarshiha on Tuesday (29). It also said it had killed a large number of Hezbollah fighters in what it called “limited, localized, targeted raids”.

Adraee said one of the fighters killed by Israeli forces was Mustafa Ahmed Shehadi, whom he called a prominent commander in the group’s elite Radwan Force. Hezbollah did not comment on the claim.

Shehadi was killed in a strike on Nabatieh, a large southern town, Adraee said. On Wednesday, the military also issued evacuation warnings for eight small towns in the district surrounding Nabatieh, urging their residents to move north of the Awali River.

On Tuesday night, an Israeli airstrike killed at least 10 people in the coastal city of Sidon in southern Lebanon, according to a report by the country’s national news agency. It said the strike injured at least 36 others. Until recently, attacks on Sidon, one of Lebanon’s largest cities, and the areas around it, had been rare.

Hezbollah said its forces had battled Israeli troops in recent days near the border town of Kfar Kila and the mountain town of Khiam, which is well known in Lebanon as the former site of a prison camp run by allies of Israel during its two-decade occupation of southern Lebanon.

The camp was turned into a museum by the Lebanese government after Israel withdrew in 2000, although it was later destroyed by an Israeli airstrike during the 2006 war in Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s claims could not be independently verified. The national news agency reported that Israeli soldiers near Khiam were “attempting to infiltrate the town under heavy fire” on Wednesday and that Israel’s air force had conducted multiple raids on the area.

-New York Times