Israel's airstrike warnings terrify and confuse Lebanese civilians

BEIRUT (AP) — As the war between Israel and Hezbollah intensifies, Lebanese civilians are increasingly paying the price – and this dangerous reality often becomes clear in the middle of the night: That’s when the Israeli military typically warns people to evacuate buildings or neighborhoods to avoid airstrikes.

Moein Shreif was recently awakened at 3 a.m. by a neighbor calling to alert him that Israel planned to strike a nearby building in his middle-class suburb south of Beirut where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

Shreif, his wife and their three children quickly fled their multi-story apartment building and drove away. Within minutes, explosions rang out, he said later that day upon returning to see the smoldering ruins of his building and the one next door.

“I didn’t even have time to dress properly, as you can see,” said Shreif, a well-known Lebanese folk and pop singer who was still wearing his pajamas from the night before. “I didn’t take anything out of the house.”

Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging strikes nearly every day since the start of the war in Gaza. Hezbollah says it will fire rockets into Israel until there's a cease-fire in Gaza; Israel says its fighting to stop those attacks, which have forced tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes.

But it wasn’t until late last month, when Israel dramatically expanded its aerial campaign against Hezbollah, that Lebanese people began receiving regular warnings about upcoming airstrikes. Human rights groups say Israel's warnings — which aren't issued before many airstrikes — are inadequate and sometimes misleading.

On Sept. 23, Israel made 80,000 calls into Lebanon, according to Imad Kreidieh, head of the country’s telecommunications company – presumably recorded warnings about upcoming airstrikes.

The calls caused panic. Schools shut down. People rushed home early from work. It ended up being the deadliest day of airstrikes in Lebanon in decades, with over 500 people killed — roughly one quarter of all those killed in Lebanon the past year, according to the country’s Health Ministry. Women and children make up one quarter of all the deaths, the ministry says.

Israel has issued warnings on social media nearly every day since then.

On Oct. 1, 27 villages in southern Lebanon were told to evacuate to the north of the Awali River, dozens of kilometers (miles) away. “Save your lives,” the instructions said.

That is when Salam, a 42-year-old mother of two, fled the village of Ain Ebel. She and her family are now staying with relatives in Beirut. Salam refused to give her full name for fear of reprisals.

So far, Ain Ebel – a mostly Christian village – hasn’t been bombarded, although surrounding villages whose residents are predominantly Shiite Muslims have been. Salam's teenage children are terrified of going home, especially since Israel launched a ground invasion.

Salam is still baffled and angry that her village was evacuated.

So far, evacuation notices in Lebanon have been far more limited than in Gaza, but the messages in both places have a common theme. In Gaza, Israel says it is targeting Hamas militants embedded among Gaza's civilians. In Lebanon, it warns of similar behavior by Hezbollah, a Hamas ally.

Most of the Israeli military's warnings first appear on the social media accounts of its Arabic spokesperson. They are then amplified by the Lebanese media.

The warnings instruct people to vacate homes “immediately,” and they are usually followed by a series of overnight strikes that often cause damage in areas beyond those that were warned. Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah fighters, weapons or other assets belonging to the group. Warnings are rarely issued before daytime strikes.

The Lebanese government says at least 1.2 million people have been displaced by the war, the vast majority since Israel ramped up airstrikes across the country last month. Over 800 of some 1,000 shelters are over capacity.

One quarter of Lebanese territory is now under Israeli military displacement orders, according to the U.N.'s human rights division.

“Calling on residents of nearly 30 villages to leave ‘immediately’ is not effective and unlawfully suggests that civilians who do not leave an area will be deemed to be combatants,” said Ramzi Kaiss, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Beirut.

Kaiss said Israel — which usually issues warnings 30 to 90 minutes ahead of airstrikes — is obligated to protect civilians who refuse to evacuate, or who are physically unable to.

Amnesty International is also critical of Israel's practice of warning entire towns and villages to evacuate. It “raises questions around whether this is intended to create the conditions for mass displacement,” Agnes Callamard, the group's secretary general said in a statement on Thursday.

The Israeli military didn’t respond to a request for comment. It has previously said it makes a significant effort to save civilian lives with its warnings.

For almost a year, Israel’s strikes were mostly concentrated in communities along the border, far from the capital and its populous suburbs. But now people who once felt relatively safe in the outskirts of Beirut are increasingly at risk, and their neighborhoods are receiving a small but growing share of airstrike warnings.

In Shreif’s case, he said his neighbor called about five minutes after the Israeli military issued a warning on the social media platform X.

Shreif considers himself lucky: If it wasn’t for that wake-up call, his family might not be alive. The AP could not determine whether any people were killed or injured in the strike that destroyed Shreif's building or the one next door.

To the northeast of Beirut, in the Bekaa Valley, Israel recently issued a warning to people to stay at least 1,000 meters (yards) away from their town or village if they are in or a near a home that has weapons belonging to Hezbollah.

Some of the warnings have come in the form of animated videos. One shows an elderly woman in a kitchen, suggesting she is unaware of hidden rooms and compartments in her own house that contain weapons for Hezbollah.

“Didn’t you know?” the narrator says in Arabic, as the elderly woman discovers rockets under the couch, behind the shower curtains and elsewhere. The video warns viewers to leave their homes immediately if they – or their neighbors – discover weapons.

But in many cases there are no warnings at all.

Last month, in Ain el-Delb near the southern city of Sidon, an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building, burying about 70 people under the rubble.

Achraf Ramadan, 34, and his father were among the lucky one who rescue workers were able to pull out alive. His mother was taken to the hospital alive, but she later died from her wounds. His younger sister Julia, a public relations professional in her late 20s, was found dead. Achraf and Julia together had been leading initiatives to support displaced Lebanese families in and around Sidon.

“This is a nice and peaceful neighborhood,” Ramadan said, sounding dejected. “The international community is asleep and not taking initiative. On the contrary, I think it's giving Israel an excuse for its barbarity on the pretext of self-defense.”

Associated Press writers Fadi Tawil in Beirut, Julia Frankel in Jerusalem, and Zeina Karam in London, contributed to this report.

FILE - A man looks at destroyed buildings hit by Israeli airstrikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

FILE - People and rescue workers search for victims after an Israeli airstrike hit two adjacent buildings, in Ain el-Delb neighborhood east of the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari, File)

FILE - Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike in the sourthern suburbs of Beirut's southern suburbs in Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)

FILE - Smoke rises as a building collapses in Beirut's southern suburbs in Lebanon, Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

File - Flames and smoke rise from an Israeli airstrike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)

A mobile phone displays an Israeli alert warning residents of southern Lebanon not to return to their homes until further notice in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Men read mobile phone alerts telling residents of southern Lebanon not to return to their homes until further notice because of operations Israel says are targeting Hezbollah facilities in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A pair of unwelcome and destructive guests named Helene and Milton have stormed their way into this year's presidential election.

The back-to-back hurricanes have jumbled the schedules of Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, both of whom devoted part of their Thursdays to tackling questions about the storm recovery effort.

The two hurricanes are forcing basic questions about who as president would best respond to deadly natural disasters, a once-overlooked issue that has become an increasingly routine part of the job. And just weeks before the Nov. 5 election, the storms have disrupted the mechanics of voting in several key counties.

Vice President Harris is trying to use this as an opportunity to project leadership, appearing alongside President Joe Biden at briefings and calling for bipartisan cooperation. Former President Trump is trying to use the moment to attack the administration's competence and question whether it is withholding help from Republican areas, despite no evidence of such behavior.

Adding to the pressure is the need to provide more money for the Small Business Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which would require House Republicans to work with the Democratic administration. Biden said Thursday that lawmakers should address the situation immediately.

“Dealing with back-to-back crises will put FEMA under more scrutiny and, therefore, the Biden administration will be under a microscope in the days leading up to the election,” said Timothy Kneeland, a professor at Nazareth University in Rochester, New York, who has studied the issue.

“Vice President Harris must empathize with the victims without altering the campaign schedule and provide consistent messaging on the widespread devastation that makes FEMA’s work even more challenging than normal,” Kneeland added.

Already, Trump and Harris have separately gone to Georgia to assess hurricane damage and pledge support, and Harris has visited North Carolina, requiring the candidates to cancel campaign events elsewhere and use up time that is a precious resource in the final weeks before any election. Both Georgia and North Carolina are political battlegrounds, raising the stakes.

The hurricane fallout is evident in the candidates' campaign events as well.

On Thursday, the first question Harris got at a Univision town hall in Las Vegas came from a construction worker and undecided voter from Tampa, Florida. Ramiro Gonzalez asked about talk that the administration has not done enough to support people after Helene and whether the people in Milton's path would have access to aid — a sign that Trump’s messaging is breaking through with some potential voters.

Harris has called out the level of misinformation being circulated by Republicans, but her fuller answer revealed the dynamics at play just a few weeks before an election.

“I have to stress that this is not a time for people to play politics,” she said.

On the same day, Trump opened his speech at the Detroit Economic Club by praising Republican governors in the affected states and blasting the Biden-Harris administration.

“They’ve let those people suffer unjustly,” he said about those affected by Helene in North Carolina.

The storms have also scrambled the voting process in places. North Carolina 's State Board of Elections has passed a resolution to help people in the state's affected counties vote. Florida will allow some counties greater flexibility in distributing mail-in ballots and changing polling sites for in-person voting. But a federal judge in Georgia said Thursday the state doesn't need to reopen voter registration despite the disruptions by Helene.

Tension has begun to override the disaster response, with Biden on Wednesday and Thursday saying that Trump has spread falsehoods that are “un-American.”

As the Democratic nominee, Harris has suddenly been a major part of the response to hurricanes, a role that traditionally has not involved vice presidents in prior administrations.

On Thursday, she participated virtually at a Situation Room briefing on Milton while she was in Nevada for campaign activities. She has huddled in meetings about response plans and on Wednesday phoned into CNN live to discuss the administration's efforts.

At a Wednesday appearance with Biden to discuss Milton ahead of it making landfall, Harris subtly tied back the issues into her campaign policies to stop price gouging on food and other products.

“To any company that — or individual that might use this crisis to exploit people who are desperate for help through illegal fraud or price gouging — whether it be at the gas pump, the airport, or the hotel counter — know that we are monitoring these behaviors and the situation on the ground very closely and anyone taking advantage of consumers will be held accountable,” she said.

Harris warned that Milton “poses extreme danger.” It made landfall in Florida late Wednesday and left more than 3 million without power. But the storm surge never reached the same levels as Helene, which led to roughly 230 fatalities and for a prolonged period left mountainous parts of North Carolina without access to electricity, cell service and roadways.

Trump and his allies have seized on the aftermath of Helene to spread misinformation about the administration's response. Their debunked claims include statements that victims can only receive $750 in aid as well as false charges that emergency response funds were diverted to immigrants.

The former president said the administration's response to Helene was worse than the George W. Bush administration's widely panned handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which led to nearly 1,400 deaths.

“This hurricane has been a bad one, Kamala Harris has left them stranded," Trump said at a recent rally in Juneau, Wisconsin. “This is the worst response to a storm or a catastrophe or a hurricane that we’ve ever seen ever. Probably worse than Katrina, and that’s hard to beat, right?"

Asked about the Trump campaign's strategic thinking on emphasizing the hurricane response, campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it reflects a pattern of “failed leadership” by the Biden-Harris administration that also includes the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and security at the U.S. southern border.

“Kamala has left Americans behind and proven she is not equipped to solve crises at the highest level," Leavitt said.

John Gasper, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who has researched government responses to natural disasters, said storm victims generally want to ensure foremost that they get the aid they need.

“These disasters essentially end up being good tests of leadership for local, state and federal officials in how they respond," he said.

But Gasper noted that U.S. politics have gotten so polarized and other issues such as the economy are shaping the election, such that the debate currently generating so much heat between Trump and the Biden-Harris administration might not matter that much on Election Day.

“On the margin, it will matter," he said. "Will it define the election? Probably not. There’s so many other things out there.”

AP writer Adriana Gomez Licon contributed to this report.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a meeting of the Detroit Economic Club, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign event Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024, on the Gila River Indian Community reservation in Chandler, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump talks with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp after speaking at a temporary relief shelter as he visits areas impacted by Hurricane Helene, Friday, Oct. 4, 2024, in Evans, Ga. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, right, receives a briefing from North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper on the damage from Hurricane Helene, Saturday, October 5, 2024 in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)