At least seven hospitals are in restricted areas imposed by the Israeli military on the southern outskirts of the Lebanese capital, including the Great Prophet Hospital and St. Therese Hospital, a CNN analysis of Israeli military evacuation orders has found.
The unsafe areas in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a group of residential neighborhoods that also include Hezbollah’s headquarters, are approximately 9 square kilometers (3.4 square miles) in size.
CNN analyzed a total of 39 evacuation orders as of the night of October 6, which had been issued almost daily since September 27 by the IDF’s Arab spokesman, Avichay Adraee, in his posts on X.
Typically, leaflets warn residents to evacuate specific buildings scheduled to be targeted “immediately” and flee to areas beyond a 500-meter radius of the target. Satellite images included in the posts show target buildings highlighted in red.
Over the past 10 days, these warnings have preceded airstrikes, sometimes lasting just a few minutes. In other cases, notably two raids that hit Beirut city limits for the first time since the 2006 war, no such warnings were issued. CNN asked the IDF for comment at the time and received no response.
CNN verified the locations of 39 buildings identified as close to Hezbollah targets by the Israeli military as of the night of October 6, and measured a 500-meter radius around each building to calculate the total area from which the attack would take place. Civilians were ordered to evacuate. It adds up to 8.9 square kilometers (3.4 sq mi) of the city’s southern suburb, known as the suburb.
East suburb It has been the epicenter of the most reported airstrikes so far, some of which hit very close to Lebanon’s only public airport.
The Israeli army has not yet provided residents with guidance on when they can return to the affected areas.
CNN also found that charts shared by the Israeli military early along with evacuation orders were inaccurate in some cases. The diagrams appear to show the 500-metre zone around the targeted buildings from which residents must evacuate for their safety – a red circle appears around the highlighted building, and a dotted line says “500 metres” in Arabic. In fact, the radius of the buffer zones described in these cases is only about 100 metres. This was the case for six separate evacuation orders before the IDF stopped including illustrations of restricted areas in its drawings. CNN has contacted the Israeli military for comment.
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