Tyre Is Now The Epicenter Of Israel’s Assault On Lebanon

By Lylla Younes|Drop Site News

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BEIRUT, Lebanon—When the Israeli military repeated its displacement order for the entire city of Tyre (Sour) in southern Lebanon at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Ali Sleiman decided to head to the shore with his fishing poles to pass the time. Neither he nor his relatives and neighbors believed that their small corner of the city would be targeted by the Israeli military. A stretch of low-rise residential buildings that butt up against the Palestinian refugee camp of El-Buss, the area is primarily made up of working class residents, both Lebanese and Palestinian, along with displaced families from surrounding areas.

The airstrike came an hour later, shaking the earth and sending a thunderous boom throughout the city. Sleiman saw the cloud of smoke rise above his neighborhood and immediately left his supplies by the shore and sped home on his motorcycle. It was a direct hit on his family building. The strike had left a crater in the earth so deep that groundwater had begun to fill it. He screamed and dug through the rubble until he found his 82-year-old mother writhing in pain, her leg badly mangled. His brother’s lifeless body lay close by.

“I went crazy. I started shouting at the first responders, asking them where they were taking him,” Sleiman told Drop Site, his voice hoarse from breathing in the acrid smoke and fumes the day before. The airstrike killed three people, including his brother, Fadel, and injured at least 17 others. The entire residential block was destroyed.

“He was loving and respectful and incredibly giving,” Suleiman said of his brother, who left behind a wife and five children. Suleiman described Fadel as a familiar face in Tyre’s port, where he fished and painted boats for a living. “He was always helping the poor, always smiling.”

The Israeli strike was one of at least fifteen that rained down on Tyre overnight Wednesday and into Thursday morning, according to Moussa Shaalan, a member of the Lebanese Civil Defense stationed in Tyre. His voice was fatigued after a long night of retrieving survivors and the dead from the rubble. The Israeli military issued warnings for some residential buildings at 3:30 a.m. local time; other houses, like Sleiman’s, were bombed without warning.

“It was the worst night since the start of the war, and this has been the worst war we have seen,” Khalil al-Zein, a local official, told Drop Site.

Tyre has become the latest epicenter of Israel’s relentless military assault on Lebanon, which has continued to escalate despite a nominal ceasefire declared last month. Over the past few days, the Israeli military has issued repeated displacement orders for the entire city and has pounded it with waves of airstrikes.

The fourth largest city in Lebanon, home to around 160,000 people, Tyre has experienced violent waves of bombardment throughout the latest phase of Israel’s assault. Yet tens of thousands continued to reside in the coastal city and its surrounding municipalities, both in apartment buildings and in the densely packed schools that have been converted into shelters for the displaced. Many of Tyre’s residents were displaced earlier in the war, Shaalan told Drop Site, but decided to return home. “They say they have nowhere else to go. They say that displacement was humiliating,” he said.

Residents of Tyre, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, express pride in their city’s ancient heritage, and one where people of all sects and faiths have historically lived. “Tyre is the model of co-existence,” al-Zein said. “We live together. We celebrate each other’s holidays.” The city was officially declared a UNESCO World heritage site in 1984.

But the latest Israeli attack has caused another wave of mass displacement from the city, with thousands fleeing to the north on traffic-clogged roads.

Khaled Shaaban, a lawyer born and raised in Tyre, spent much of the war traveling back and forth between his hometown and Saida (Sidon), an hour north, where he rented an apartment for his aging parents. When the so-called ceasefire was declared in mid-April, his family returned to Tyre, and normal life initially seemed to return, but over time “it became clear that it was a truce on paper only,” he said. Back at the apartment in Saida after the Israeli military’s warning on Wednesday, Shaaban watched from afar as his city burned. He said that many of his friends’ homes and businesses were destroyed in the waves of bombing.

“It’s a city that’s been through many catastrophes across history, and it always rises,” Shaaban mused, before his voice darkened. “No one can believe what is happening. The city is transforming before our eyes. It won’t be the same after this war.”

The “ceasefire” in Lebanon first announced by U.S. President Donald Trump on April 16 did not bring an end to Israel’s military campaign and instead ushered in a new phase of ethnic cleansing across southern Lebanon. The Israeli military sent armored bulldozers into the border region to tear up roads and homes, and booby trapped and detonated entire villages—then bragged about it in videos on social media. Over 600 people have been killed across Lebanon since the ceasefire’s declaration. According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, Israel has killed a total of 3,324 people and wounded more than 10,000 others since March 2.

This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed that Israel would escalate its attacks on Lebanon, saying in a video Monday that “we will intensify our strikes” and that he had instructed the Israeli military not to “take its foot off the gas. On the contrary, I said to step on the gas even more.”

The escalation comes amid fierce resistance attacks by Hezbollah targeting Israeli soldiers and military positions with FPV drones that troops have been unable to intercept. At a security cabinet meeting on Tuesday, where Netanyahu said, “We are deepening our operation in Lebanon,” he added that the security cabinet is “leading a massive national effort to advance creative and innovative solutions against explosive drones.”

Israel’s ramped up assault comes as Lebanese and Israeli military officials are set to hold their first security talks on Friday in Washington, DC. This follows Lebanese and Israeli government officials holding previous rounds of U.S.-brokered talks over the past few weeks. Hezbollah has dismissed the talks and vowed to continue fighting until Israel ends its military assault and withdraws its troops from Lebanese territory.

Despite Lebanese officials saying they had secured guarantees protecting Beirut from further attacks, the Israeli military bombed the town of Choueifat in Beirut’s southern suburbs in broad daylight on Thursday. Israel claimed the strike targeted Ali Al-Husseini, a commander in Hezbollah’s missile unit. Local media reported that an infant girl and her mother were killed in the attack.

Shaalan said that as long as the strikes continue in Tyre, the city’s civil defense workers would be at the ready, despite the risks. Rescue workers in Lebanon have been relentlessly targeted by the Israeli military, often in double- or triple-tap strikes. Israel has killed at least 125 health workers in targeted strikes since March 2, according to the Health Ministry.

“We sleep in our cars, on the pavement, in the medical center,” Shaalan said. “We’re afraid to fall asleep and miss something.”

A moment later, he heard shouting in the background, and apologized, saying he had to go. The Israelis had issued another warning for the city.