Nearly 1 million civilians flee war in Lebanon, U.N. says

JERUSALEM – Hezbollah militants fired rockets at Israeli towns and fought ground battles with Israeli troops in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, as the United Nations warned that nearly 1 million Lebanese had fled the spreading war between Israel and Iranian-backed groups in the Middle East.

In a sign of the war’s growing scale, Israeli evacuation orders now cover a quarter of Lebanon’s land area, according to the United Nations, which says the calls have sent people fleeing from more than 100 villages and urban areas.

“To the people of South Lebanon: Be careful!” an Israeli military spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, said Wednesday in an Arabic language warning posted online. Israeli forces, he said, were continuing “to attack Hezbollah sites in and near your village, and for your own safety you are prohibited from returning to your homes until further notice.”

More than 600,000 people of Lebanon’s 5.4 million have been displaced within the country, threatening to overwhelm shelters, U.N. officials warned, and 300,000 others have fled abroad. Half of Lebanon’s public schools have been turned into shelters, the aid group Save the Children said Wednesday.

Displaced people have set up tents on white-sand beaches where vacationers once sunbathed, and people have taken refuge not only in schools but also in parks, unfinished buildings and at least one nightclub.

“The humanitarian impact is absolutely dire,” Duncan Sullivan, the program leader of the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration, said Wednesday.

The war began just over a year ago after Hamas militants led an attack into Israel from the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces moved to destroy Hamas there, but when Hezbollah quickly joined the fight from the north, firing rockets into Israel, Israel found itself engaged in hostilities at another border.

Over the months that followed, the exchanges of fire displaced tens of thousands of people in Lebanon and Israel. Then Israeli ground troops crossed the border.

Israeli military officials have described the invasion as limited, saying it is aimed at clearing the border area of Hezbollah fighters and weapons.

Even as they fight in the north, Israeli forces have continued their battle in Gaza and have also stepped up military action in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. At least four people were killed there, in Nablus, on Wednesday in a raid by undercover Israeli forces, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry and the Israeli police.

But it is the tensions between Israel and Iran – the sponsor of Hamas and Hezbollah – that have done the most in recent days to keep the region on edge. A week after Iran unleashed a barrage of missiles at Israel, its allies and adversaries alike are waiting to see what happens next.

On Wednesday, the Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, issued a new warning on Iran.

“Our attack will be deadly, precise and above all surprising,” he said. “Whoever attempts to hurt the State of Israel will pay the price.”

American officials, worried about an uncontrolled escalation, were caught off-guard by Israel’s recent onslaught against Hezbollah and stymied in their efforts to broker a cease-fire both in that conflict and in the war in Gaza.

Relations between the allies have been seriously strained. On Wednesday, for the first time in two months, President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel spoke by phone.

Iran has also sought to shore up relations with its Arab neighbors this week, dispatching its foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, on a tour that included some of the U.S.’ closest partners in the region. On Wednesday, he visited one such partner – Saudi Arabia, a longtime Iranian rival.

Before Araghchi set out from Tehran, he said that Iran did not want war with Israel but that it was prepared to strike back if attacked. He also said Iran would continue its support of militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, a network that calls itself the “axis of resistance.”

Hezbollah has been battered by Israel’s assaults over the last three weeks, but the group still has a formidable arsenal.

A Hezbollah missile barrage Wednesday killed two people in the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona, Israel’s emergency services said. And six people were wounded by shrapnel after a rocket hit a bypass road near the northern city of Haifa, the Israeli military said.

The volley followed another night of Israeli airstrikes in the densely populated areas near Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway, and an Israeli strike near the Iranian Embassy in Syria.

More than 800 of Lebanon’s 990 shelters are already full, according to the government, and the few that do have room are often too remote for residents to reach, said Sullivan, the U.N. official. Some have only one or two toilets for 100 people and lack electricity, adequate lighting or safe areas for women and children.

The European Union also announced it was dispatching three planes loaded with humanitarian aid to Beirut.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.