Amnesty accuses Israel of 'misleading' Lebanon evacuation orders

Amnesty International accused Israel on Thursday of "misleading" and sometimes inadequate calls for residents to evacuate parts of the country, expressing concern the warnings intend to massively uproot southerners.

Since September 23, Israel has launched an intense air campaign that has killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon and displaced over a million more from their homes, according to official figures.

"Warnings issued by the Israeli military to residents of Dahieh, the densely populated southern suburbs of Beirut, were inadequate," Amnesty chief Agnes Callamard said in a statement.

The group said it analyzed more than a dozen evacuation warnings and maps and conducted interviews with residents of south Beirut and south Lebanon.

Callamard said the warning included "misleading maps" and were issued "at short notice –- in one instance less than 30 minutes before strikes began –- in the middle of the night, via social media" when many are asleep, she added.

The Israeli military's Arabic spokesperson has been routinely issuing evacuation orders online ahead of expected strikes mainly targeting Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon.

"Israel's warnings in southern Lebanon covered large geographical areas, raising concerns as to whether they were designed instead to trigger mass relocation," Amnesty said.

"The conditions being created by Israel's actions in south Lebanon risk forcibly displacing the majority of the civilian population there," it added.

Last week, Israel also announced it was conducting "targeted" ground incursions in Lebanon's south.

Analysts had previously told AFP Israel's aim in expanding its activity at the border could be to create a buffer zone in Lebanon's south, where Hezbollah holds sway.

Israel has issued calls to evacuate 118 south Lebanon towns and villages in the first week of October, Amnesty said.

The group warned that evacuation calls "do not make south Lebanon a free-fire zone" where remaining civilians as seen as targets and urged Israel to abide by international law to minimize harm to civilians.

One quarter of Lebanese territory is under Israeli military displacement orders, according to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

On September 27, an Israeli air strike killed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who had led the group for 32 years, in the group's south Beirut stronghold.

The latest escalation followed a year of near-daily fire between Hezbollah and Israel, which the group launched in support of ally Hamas after its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered war in Gaza.