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Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.

We're coming to you live from London.

I'm James Menendez.

And we're going to begin today in Lebanon.

And what looks like a sharp escalation in the war between Israel

and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. The Israeli military has been carrying out

airstrikes near the southern city of Tyre and now it's told everyone in a large area of the

south to leave, saying they are now combat zones. The IDF says it's in response to an increase in Hezbollah drone attacks.

There is meant to be a ceasefire in place,

not least because the US and Iran are trying to reach an agreement to end their war.

Well, the BBC's John Sudworth is in Beirut.

What exactly is this evacuation order? Well, there are a number in

effect, James. The widest one is telling everybody south of the Zirani River that they need to move north.

Now, that is a huge swath of this country, about 14% of Lebanon's total landmass, and would involve many,

many thousands of people. But there are also specific evacuation orders in place for different

towns and some cities, a city of Teer, some distance from the Israel-Lebanon

border, well outside of the area that Israel has designated as its exclusion zone, the yellow

line, as it calls it, in the city of Teer, people were given two hours before the bombardments started,

two hours in which they had to decide whether to take the risk of staying or whether to pack

their families get onto the already overcrowded roads, looking for already very scarce accommodation.

This is a country in the middle of a massive

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