BEIRUT: Israel issued an unprecedented evacuation warning on Thursday for the entirety of Beirut's southern suburbs, a stronghold of Hezbollah, sending residents in the district of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing in a panic.
The warning followed a fresh wave of Israeli attacks on Iran, which again lashed out at Gulf nations Qatar and Bahrain as the Middle East war reverberated throughout the region and far beyond.
Human Rights Watch said on Thursday that the Israeli military's call for residents of vast areas of southern Lebanon to evacuate raised "serious risks of violations of the laws of war."
"Calling on everyone who lives south of the Litani (River) to evacuate immediately raises serious legal and humanitarian red flags and fears for the safety of civilians," said Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch.
"How are older people, the sick and people with disabilities going to be able to evacuate immediately? And how will their safety be guaranteed as they leave?" he said in a statement from the rights group.
HRW said "the sweeping nature" of Israel's call raised "concerns that their purpose is not to protect civilians", adding that the area was home to hundreds of thousands of people. The evacuation call "raises serious risks of violations of the laws of war", it added.
On Thursday, Israel renewed its warning to residents of hundreds of square kilometres (miles) of southern Lebanon to evacuate because of military action.
In a message to the residents of Beirut's southern suburbs, known as Dahiyeh, an Israeli military spokesman said: "Save your lives and evacuate your residences immediately."
Such warnings typically foreshadow large-scale attacks, and massive traffic jams formed on the outskirts of the suburbs, as people fired guns in the air, urging locals to leave as soon as possible.
Lebanon was dragged into the conflict on Monday, when the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah attacked Israel to avenge the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the US-Israeli strikes that launched the war.
Israel responded with air strikes and sent ground troops into some Lebanese border villages, and told residents of a large area of south Lebanon to leave in anticipation of military operations there.
The war has drawn in global powers, snarling shipping and rattling energy markets. It has been felt as far away as the Sri Lankan coast, where a US submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship, and Azerbaijan, which threatened retaliation after a drone hit an airport.
Earlier in the day, Israel said its forces had hit "several command centres belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation" in south Beirut.
Lebanese authorities say at least 72 people have been killed, 437 wounded and 83,000 displaced from their homes since Monday.