For the first time in almost a month of fighting, the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of Lebanon’s biggest eastern city and its suburbs on Wednesday, prompting residents of Baalbek to flee their homes.
The Israeli army warned that it was planning assaults on Hezbollah objectives and asked people in Baalbek and the other communities to evacuate right away.
According to reports, citizens fled in terror, clogging the main roadways out of the city.
Using loudspeakers, civil defense vehicles urged everyone to evacuate the city right away.
Before the evacuation order, the war had forced 60 percent of its estimated 250,000 residents to flee.
The ancient Roman temple complex, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, is part of the evacuation zone.
The district governor reported Tuesday that Israeli strikes on the Bekaa Valley killed over 60 people in a dozen towns, making it the worst day in the region in over a year of fighting.
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 reports.
