Fatima Shehadeh, 35, fled the southern suburbs of Beirut at 2:00 am, on foot, carrying her infant. She has four children. “My home was bombed yesterday,” said another displaced resident, Malak Jaber, also 35. “If I want to go back… we’ll be starting from zero.”
Their flight followed March 2, 2026, when Hezbollah fired rockets and drones at Israel for the first time in about a year. The group said it was answering the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The November 27, 2024 ceasefire, already strained by near-daily Israeli attacks, collapsed within days.
Five days of strikes
By March 6, the Israel Defense Forces said they had hit “over 500 Hezbollah targets” and flown twenty-six waves of airstrikes on Dahiyeh alone, FDD’s Long War Journal reported. The IDF claimed 70 operatives killed.
Evacuation orders came in stages. First 53 locales in south Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley, then 37 more north of the Litani River. On March 4 the army told everyone south of the Litani to move north. At 2:38 p.m. on March 5 it ordered several Dahiyeh neighborhoods in south Beirut emptied, an area home to an estimated 500,000-700,000 residents. Within a day, 100,000-300,000 people had been displaced.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem called the attack “purely a nationalistic act of self-defense” and said the group would fight “until victory or martyrdom.”
Beirut pushes back
The Lebanese government banned Hezbollah’s military and security activities and told it to surrender its weapons to the state. On March 5 it ordered the detention and deportation of Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel in Lebanon. President Joseph Aoun accused Hezbollah of trying to “collapse” the state and said he was ready for direct talks with Israel.
French President Emmanuel Macron urged Hezbollah to “renounce its weapons.” Hezbollah sources answered that “talk of mediation is premature.” Israeli Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said the army “will not desist until Hezbollah is disarmed,” and Defense Minister Israel Katz said troops would stay in Lebanese “security zones indefinitely.”
The toll
Al-Monitor reported on March 10 that Israeli attacks since March 2 had killed at least 486 people and wounded more than 1,300. An Israeli strike in the southern town of Jwaya killed its mayor and a municipal council member. In Beirut, families sheltered in tents on the concrete floor of the Camille Chamoun Sports City Stadium. The UN described “a faster pace of displacement compared to 2024.”
Al Jazeera’s March 17 count was grimmer. Between March 2 and 16, at least 886 people died, among them 67 women, 111 children and 38 health workers, and 2,141 were wounded, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health. Israel announced “limited and targeted ground operations” and widened its evacuation orders to north of the Zahrani River. The Norwegian Refugee Council said the orders covered more than 1,470 square kilometers, approximately 14 percent of Lebanon. Registered displaced people numbered 1,049,328, with 132,742 in collective shelters.
Sources
- Israel strikes over 500 targets in Lebanon, issues evacuation orders in renewed war with Hezbollah (March 2-6)
- Fresh Israeli strikes hit Lebanon after evacuation warnings
- Mapping Israeli attacks and the displacement of one million in Lebanon
