At least seven hospitals are in the no-go zones imposed by the Israeli military in the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital, including Al Rassoul Al Azam Hospital and St. Therese Hospital, CNN analysis of Israeli military evacuation orders found.
The unsafe zones in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a group of residential neighborhoods that also house Hezbollah’s seat of power, encompass nearly 9 square kilometers (3.4 square miles).
CNN analyzed a total of 39 evacuation orders up to and including the night of October 6, which have been issued almost daily since September 27 by Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) Arabic spokesman Avichay Adraee in posts on X.
Typically, the posts warn residents to “immediately” evacuate specific buildings slated for targeting and flee to areas beyond a 500-meter radius of the target. Satellite images embedded in the posts show the target buildings highlighted in red.
Over the past 10 days, such warnings have preceded airstrikes, sometimes by no more than a few minutes. In other cases, notably two strikes that hit within Beirut’s city limits for the first time since the 2006 war, no such warnings were issued. CNN asked the Israeli military for comment on this at the time and did not receive a response.
CNN verified the locations of 39 buildings identified as being near Hezbollah targets by the Israeli military up to the night of October 6, and measured a 500-meter radius around each one to calculate the total area from which civilians were ordered to evacuate. It adds up to 8.9 square kilometers (3.4 square miles) of the city’s southern suburbs, known as Dahiyeh.
The east of Dahiyeh has been the epicenter of announced airstrikes so far, with some hitting very close to Lebanon’s only public airport.
The Israeli military has not yet given residents guidance on when they can return to the affected areas.
CNN also found that infographics shared early on by the Israeli military alongside its evacuation orders were inaccurate in some cases. The graphics appear to illustrate the 500-meter zone around target buildings from which residents must evacuate for their safety – showing a red circle around the highlighted building, and a dotted line annotated with “500 meters” in Arabic. In actuality, the radiuses of the highlighted buffer zones in those cases only measured around 100 meters. This was the case for six separate evacuation orders before the IDF stopped including illustrations of the no-go-zones in their graphics. CNN has contacted the IDF for comment.