Lebanese civilians fled the southern city of Tyre on Wednesday after the Israel army issued warnings for residents to evacuate large parts of the city which is home to thousands of displaced.

“The situation is very bad, we’re evacuating people,” said Mortada Mhanna, who heads Tyre’s disaster management unit.

Bilal Kashmar, the unit’s media officer, told AFP that many were fleeing the city and heading towards the suburbs.

“You could say that the entire city of Tyre is being evacuated,” he said, adding that the once vibrant southern hub had already been emptied of most of its residents.

Only about 14,500 people were still in Tyre on Tuesday, thousands of them displaced from other parts of the south, he told AFP.

“Some families, who had not left the city of Tyre before, began leaving their homes to stay clear from areas that the Israeli enemy threatened to target,” Lebanon’s official National News Agency said.

People began to flee immediately after the Israeli army called on residents of large parts of Tyre to leave ahead of military operations it claimed was targeting Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

The army’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee posted a map of the affected streets in Tyre on X, saying: “You must immediately move out of the area marked in red and head north of the Awali River. Anyone who is near Hezbollah elements, facilities and combat equipment is putting his life in danger.”

On September 23, Israel launched an intensive air campaign in Lebanon, after almost a year of cross-border exchanges with Hezbollah over the Gaza war.

Since then, Israel has killed at least 1,552 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of health ministry figures, although the real number is likely to be higher due to data gaps.