Residents of Baalbek rushed out of their homes Wednesday after the Israeli army ordered Lebanon's main eastern city and its outskirts evacuated for the first time in more than a month of war.
The Israeli army urged residents of Baalbek and surrounding villages to leave immediately, warning it was preparing attacks on Hezbollah targets.
The main roads out of the city were jammed with vehicles as civilians fled in panic, an AFP correspondent reported.
Civil defense vehicles drove around the city urging everyone to leave immediately over loudspeaker.
Mosques and churches in the city delivered the same message over their loudspeakers.
"The city is almost empty," the correspondent said about an hour after the evacuation warning.
Before the evacuation order, the war had forced 60 percent of its estimated 250,000 residents to flee.
"The (Israeli army) will act forcefully against Hezbollah interests within your city and villages,” military spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a post on X that included a map of the area in the eastern Bekaa Valley.
The area marked for evacuation includes the ancient Roman temple complex, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Israeli strikes on the Bekaa Valley killed more than 60 people across a dozen towns, the district governor said on Tuesday, the deadliest day yet in the area in more than a year of hostilities.
The highest death toll was in the town of Sahl Allak in the Baalbek province, where 16 people were killed, according to the National News Agency, which listed deaths in 12 different locations in the Bekaa.
In Ramm, also in Baalbek, an Israeli airstrike killed nine people, including a mother and her four children, and left one other person wounded, according to NNA.
Baalbek’s Mayor Bachir Khodr described the strikes as “the most violent day in Baalbeck since the beginning of the aggression,” in a post on X. He said people remained trapped under the rubble.
