Lebanon: Israel's evacuation warnings have been 'misleading and inadequate' - new analysis

Analysis of more than a dozen Israeli evacuation warnings show how Lebanese civilians were given contradictory information and exposed to heightened danger 

Some warnings issued in middle of night on social media and with only 30 minutes notice 

Backdrop of comments from Netanyahu and others indicates that Israel considers Lebanese civilians and property to be legitimate targets

‘This is not a warning, it’s torture. It’s a sadistic game’ - resident of Burj al-Barajneh

‘We’re extremely concerned that Israel may be seeking to replicate the approach it followed in Gaza, resulting in unprecedented civilian harm’ - Agnès Callamard

Note: for a version of this press release with reproductions of a number of the maps referred to below, go here

The evacuation warnings issued by the Israeli military to residents of the southern suburbs of Beirut and south Lebanon have been inadequate - and in some cases misleading - said Amnesty International.

Amnesty analysed more than a dozen Israeli military evacuation warnings and conducted interviews with 12 residents who fled various districts in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahieh following the Israeli evacuation warnings on 27-28 September, including al-Laylaki, Hay El Sellom, Hadi Nasrallah highway and Burj al-Barajneh. Amnesty also interviewed three residents of villages in south Lebanon.

Amnesty examined two warnings issued to residents of the crowded urban areas of Dahieh overnight on 27-28 September, after the attack that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The airstrikes demolished entire residential buildings in the densely-populated area. Each warning identified three military targets and said that residents should evacuate a 500-metre radius around that location. The warnings were issued through the Israeli military’s Arabic spokesperson on X at night, without a clear timeline or details on safe routes. 

In the two Dahieh warnings, maps published by the Israeli military alongside the evacuation warnings covering six different areas were misleading. In each case the area highlighted on the maps indicating the danger zone for civilians covered a much smaller area than the 500-metre radius that the Israeli military had advised civilians was the minimum distance civilians should evacuate. To be effective, warnings must give clear and timely instructions for civilians on moving away from military objectives that are going to be targeted, with information on safe routes and destinations.

The Israeli military also issued evacuation warnings to residents of approximately 118 towns and villages in south Lebanon between 1-7 October, following the start of its ground invasion. These warnings, which included towns that were more than 35 km from the border with Israel and outside the UN-declared buffer zone, do not - said Amnesty - make south Lebanon a free-fire zone.  

Under international humanitarian law, parties to a conflict have a clear obligation to take all feasible precautions to avoid - or at least minimise - harm to civilians when carrying out attacks. This includes giving effective advance warning of attacks to civilians in affected areas unless circumstances do not permit. In any case, emphasised Amnesty, issuing warnings does not absolve Israel of its obligations under international humanitarian law to never target civilians and to take all possible measures to minimise harm to them.

According to the UN, a quarter of Lebanese territory has been affected by evacuation warnings. 

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said:

“The warnings issued by the Israeli military to residents of Dahieh - the densely-populated southern suburbs of Beirut - were inadequate. 

“Our analysis shows that not only did the warnings issued by the Israeli military include misleading maps, but they were also 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 people would be asleep, offline or not following media reports.

“Instructing the residents of entire towns and villages in south Lebanon to evacuate is an overly-general warning that is inadequate and raises questions around whether this is intended to create the conditions for mass displacement. 

“Regardless of the efficacy of the warnings, they do not mean that Israel can treat any remaining civilians as targets. 

“Having spent the last 12 months investigating Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, we’re extremely concerned that Israel may be seeking to replicate the approach it followed in Gaza, resulting in unprecedented civilian harm.

“Amnesty International is calling on Israel’s allies, including the United States, to suspend all arms transfers and other forms of military assistance to Israel due to the significant risk that these weapons could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international law. 

“The organisation is also calling for a suspension of all arms transfers to Hezbollah and other armed groups in Lebanon.”

Case studies - southern suburbs of Beirut

Starting at 11:06 pm on 27 September, the Israeli military began to issue evacuation warnings to residents of Dahieh, a suburb in the south of Beirut. In the first warning, the Israeli military instructed residents via X to move 500 metres away from three buildings in the districts of al-Laylaki and al-Hadath, both densely-populated areas, alleging that residents are “located near Hezbollah interests”. The order did not give a timeframe for the evacuation. The map published alongside this warning highlighted an area around the buildings to indicate what was supposedly the 500-metre radius that residents should leave. However, the highlighted area in fact only covered approximately a 135-metre radius. While the map showed 30 buildings within the red circle, there are in fact 500 buildings within the 500-metre radius. The same is true for the evacuation warnings in the al-Hadath district: the areas highlighted on the maps warning residents to stay 500 metres away from the Sheet building and the al-Salam Complex, showed only at approximately 125m and 100m radiuses respectively.

At around 12:36am, just an hour and a half later, local media reported an Israeli airstrike on al-Laylaki. Over the next hour and 10 minutes, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported 11 further attacks on Dahieh, including on buildings and areas that had not received an evacuation warning. Fatima, a journalist who lives in al-Laylaki, told Amnesty that her brother called her at around 11:15pm while she was covering news of the strike on Nasrallah, warning her to leave the area. She said:

“I jumped in the car and drove erratically … I arrived in al-Laylaki and found that everyone was acting as crazily as I was. If people could throw themselves off the balcony to leave faster [they would]. Screaming, running, cars honking, motorcycles, plastic bags ... I quickly helped my parents down the stairs to my car, and I only took my cat with me ... I currently have no belongings at all.”

Fatima explained that al-Laylaki is a crowded residential area that remained fully populated until that night because it is on the outskirts of Dahieh and residents did not expect it to be targeted.  

Abir, who lives with her mother close to al-Laylaki, told Amnesty that she could not immediately evacuate her house because her mother is older and sick, and needs to be carried down the stairs: 

“It was a night from hell. I laid my mother on the floor in the safest room, which is the old bathroom, we hid our heads with our arms [throughout the bombardment].” 

They were only able to leave a few hours later after a friend helped carry her mother down from the sixth floor.

At 3am on 28 September, the Israeli military issued another evacuation warning via X to residents in the districts of Burj al-Barajneh and al-Hadath, again in Beirut’s southern suburbs, instructing them to move 500 metres away from three other identified buildings. The warning did not give a timeframe for evacuation and maps of the affected areas were similarly misleading, highlighting areas much smaller than the indicated 500 metre radius.  

At 5:47 am, the National News Agency reported that Israeli airstrikes targeted al-Hadath and al-Laylaki as well as the Chouiefat and al-Kafaat districts in Beirut’s southern suburbs, which were not listed in the evacuation warning. Local media reported continued airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs throughout the day. 

Taghreed, a resident of Hay el-Sellom, said that she had not heard about the Israeli warning and took the decision to flee after the major attack that killed Hassan Nasrallah. She told Amnesty: “We were hiding and couldn’t reach the television. I don’t have social media so I don’t know what the Israelis said.” 

Ahmad, a resident of Burj al-Barajneh, also said that he made the decision to leave Dahieh immediately after the airstrike that killed Nasrallah, as he lives with his elderly parents. He said:

“While we were still stuck on the road out of Dahieh, with all the ambulances trying to prioritise the wounded people, we heard about the warning on the radio in the van. I felt bitter. This is not a warning, it’s torture. It’s a sadistic game: ‘we will kill you and your family soon. Show us how you can escape’.”

On 30 September, the Israeli military issued a warning to evacuate from the surroundings of residential buildings in al-Laylaki, Haret Hreik and Burj al-Barajneh. The Israeli military launched a series of airstrikes just 30 minutes later. Similarly, on 3 October, at 10:51 pm, the Israeli military issued an evacuation warning for the residents of Burj al-Barajneh, telling them to leave immediately. Local media reported a “heavy strike” minutes after the evacuation order was issued, and at least four attacks by 11:30 pm. 

Under international law, Hezbollah and other armed groups must, to the extent feasible, avoid locating military objectives, including fighters, ammunition, weapons, and military infrastructure, in or near densely-populated areas. However, the presence of military objectives in populated areas does not absolve Israeli forces of their obligations under international humanitarian law to avoid indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks as well as to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians, including civilians who fail to leave the area after an evacuation warning. Failure to provide effective advance warnings of attacks which may affect civilians, unless circumstances do not permit, and not taking all other feasible precautions to protect civilians, constitute violations of international humanitarian law. 

Case studies - southern Lebanon

On 1 October, the Israeli military issued two evacuation warnings to residents of southern Lebanon. The first, at 9:21 am, instructed residents not to move vehicles south of the Litani River “until further notice,” alleging that Hezbollah is using “the civilian environment and the population as human shields”. At 12:18 pm, the Israeli military instructed residents of more than 25 towns across southern Lebanon to evacuate and move north of the Awwali River, some 58 km from the border with Israel and about 30km farther than the Litani River, which marks the UN buffer zone created after the 2006 war. 

On 2 October, at 9:11 am and then at 11:15 am, the Israeli military issued warnings for a further 24 towns and villages across southern Lebanon, telling residents to “save their lives and leave their homes immediately”, ordering them to move north of the Awwali River and saying that any movement south could expose them to danger. The Israeli military issued a similar warning at 12:49 pm on 3 October for a further 25 towns and villages, at 9:11 am on 4 October for a further 35 villages, and at 12:58 pm on 7 October for 25 additional villages. 

None of the “orders” offered safe and effective evacuation information, just instructing residents to leave “immediately”. 

Amnesty’s concerns about the warnings to civilians in south Lebanon are heightened by some statements from Israeli political and military leaders indicating that they considered Lebanese civilians and property to be legitimate targets. Benjamin Netanyahu said on 27 September there is “a missile in every kitchen, a rocket in every garage”. The Israeli Education Minister said on television on 21 September that there was no difference between Hezbollah and Lebanon and that Lebanon “would be annihilated”. In June, the Israeli Defence Minister said that Israel is capable of returning Lebanon “to the stone age”. 

The south Lebanon warnings and instructions that vehicles do not travel south of the Litani River also raise serious concerns over civilians’ access to essential supplies and services, including food, medication, healthcare and fuel. The mukhtar of Rmeich, a village south of the Litani river close to the border with Israel, which did not receive an evacuation warning but is within the area in which Israel has said vehicles are prohibited from travelling, told Amnesty that supplies in the town were rapidly dwindling. “The area is going to become destitute. How can we continue? It’s like they want to displace us,” he said.

The conditions being created by Israel’s actions in south Lebanon risk forcibly displacing the majority of the civilian population there. One of the towns in southern Lebanon that the Israeli military warned must be evacuated is Ain Ebel, where the majority of residents are Christian and have no known affiliation with Hezbollah. 

Rakan Diab, an Ain Ebel resident, told Amnesty that residents of the village were surprised when, on 1 October, Ain Ebel was included in the Israeli military’s evacuation warning on X. Shortly afterwards, the village mayor received a call from a person purporting to be a member of the Israeli military warning residents to flee within around 45 minutes because there were weapons in the village. “People panicked … we needed to pack and leave immediately,” Rakan Diab said, explaining how the majority fled to the nearby village of Rmeich and the Lebanese army and the Lebanese Red Cross facilitated safe passage for a convoy of around 100 cars from Rmeich to north of the Awwali River. 

Year of Israel-Lebanon conflict

Israel’s intensified military attacks in Lebanon began on 23 September. During the first day, Israeli forces carried out at least 1,600 attacks in areas across Lebanon, killing more than 500 people and injuring more than 1,800 in the first 24 hours. Hezbollah also launched more than 200 rockets towards Israel that day, with around 10 people sustaining shrapnel or debris wounds. 

Hezbollah and Israel have been engaged in ongoing cross-border hostilities since the group launched attacks into northern Israel following the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Gaza last October. Israeli attacks on Lebanon since 7 October 2023 have killed at least 2,083 people, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health. More than 1.2 million people have been displaced in Lebanon, and at least 400,000 have crossed the border to Syria. 

Since 8 October 2023, Hezbollah and other armed groups have launched thousands of missiles at northern Israel, killing 16 civilians. A further 12 civilians, all children, were killed on 27 July in an attack on Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights. Around 63,000 residents of northern Israel have been evacuated since 8 October. In one Hezbollah attack, on 12 November 2023, an anti-tank missile hit a group of electricity company workers who were doing infrastructure work near Dovev. One worker was killed and another lightly injured. In another attack, on 9 July, two civilians were killed when a missile hit their car while driving on highway 91 in the Golan Heights. In a statement released that day, Hezbollah took responsibility and said that it targeted the nearby Nafah military base in response to the assassination of one of its members. Many of Hezbollah’s rockets are unguided and cannot be aimed at a specific target. Firing inherently inaccurate rockets into areas where civilians are present are indiscriminate attacks, and thus violate international humanitarian law. Direct attacks on civilians and indiscriminate attacks which kill or injure civilians constitute war crimes.