Israel attacked the ancient port city of Tyre in Lebanon on Wednesday after issuing its broadest evacuation order there so far, pressing on with its bombing campaign against Hezbollah even as Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken toured the region in pursuit of a diplomatic solution to the escalating conflict.
The airstrikes in Tyre, which wounded at least 16 people, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, came hours after Israel’s military warned civilians in a large portion of the southern city to move about 25 miles north. The evacuation area covered a densely populated stretch of the city, which was until recently a hub for people fleeing other parts of southern Lebanon. The extent of the damage was not immediately clear.
Mr. Blinken, who was in Israel on Wednesday morning before traveling to Saudi Arabia, got a personal but limited view of the deadly conflicts wracking the region when the launch of Hezbollah launched missiles forced him and other guests at the David Kempinski hotel in Tel Aviv into shelter rooms.
Just before leaving Tel Aviv on Wednesday, the secretary of state seemed to signal that the Biden administration was open to the possibility of approaches to stop the fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which American officials see as one of the keys to an overall de-escalation in the region.
In a departure from his usual talking points on Gaza cease-fire proposals, Mr. Blinken said that the United States was “looking at new frameworks of formulations and possibility.” He did not provide details, but a senior U.S. official said he was referring to the possibility that Israel might be willing to pause its Gaza offensive briefly in return for the return of a small number of hostages.
According to Israeli officials, Israel has recently discussed with Egypt — which has acted as an intermediary because Israel and Hamas do not speak directly to each other — the possibility of a short cease-fire, lasting roughly a week and a half, in exchange for the release of some of the 101 hostages held in Gaza by Hamas or its allies, many of whom are presumed dead.
That would be a shift from the plan that has been on the table for months, which laid out a path to free all the hostages in exchange for the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel and an Israeli commitment to end the war.
U.S. officials hope to test whether Hamas is more open to negotiations after the killing last week of its leader, Yahya Sinwar, whom Mr. Blinken on Wednesday described “the primary obstacle” to a larger agreement.
It is unclear whether such an approach is any more likely to succeed than past ones. Hamas has said it will not release any more hostages without an Israeli commitment to end the war, and its surviving leaders have signaled no softening of their position since the death of Mr. Sinwar.
Hezbollah, a powerful armed militant force backed by Iran, says it is fighting in solidarity with Hamas and has been firing rockets from southern Lebanon into Israel for the past year; it has vowed the keep fighting as long as the war in Gaza continues. The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah escalated with Israel’s recent ground invasion into southern Lebanon and increased bombardments that together have killed thousands of Lebanese and displaced around a fifth of the population.
Israeli leaders, in turn, have insisted that they must eliminate any threat posed by Hezbollah and Hamas, which also receives support from Iran.
Mr. Blinken met on Tuesday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders, and on Wednesday with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia.
On Wednesday, the Israeli military said it was targeting Hezbollah command centers in Tyre, and accused the group of embedding in civilian areas.
The Israeli military has also repeatedly asserted over the past few days that Hezbollah had stashed hundreds of millions of dollars in a command center beneath al-Sahel hospital in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
The U.S. secretary of defense, Lloyd J. Austin III, said on Wednesday that Washington had not seen information supporting Israeli claims that Hezbollah had set up a bunker complex under the hospital.
Mr. Austin told reporters at a news conference in Italy, “We’ll continue to collaborate with our Israeli counterparts to gain better fidelity on exactly what they’re looking at.”
Weeks of Israeli airstrikes across Lebanon have inflicted a major blow against Hezbollah, killing Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s longstanding leader; Hashem Safieddine, his presumed successor, whose death was confirmed by Hezbollah on Wednesday; and other leading figures in the group.
Israel previously targeted Tyre with airstrikes, but this was the first time it had called for evacuations in such a large portion of the city. The warning, posted on social media on Wednesday, covered an area equivalent to several city blocks.
Tyre is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It is home to Roman ruins that attract international tourists and have been designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The city had about 125,000 residents before the war, but many have fled in recent weeks amid Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah.
Only about 15,000 people remained in Tyre when the Israeli military issued the evacuation warning, according to Mortada Mhanna, head of Tyre’s disaster management unit. Many of those who were still in the evacuation zone on Wednesday morning fled to Tyre’s Christian quarter or to the city’s shoreline, believing they would be safer there, he said.
Emergency services workers had spent the morning driving through the city’s streets with loudspeakers in an attempt to warn civilians of impending bombardment. Hours later, the Israeli military began to target the area, sending huge clouds of smoke towering above the city.
Lebanon’s culture ministry condemned the attacks in Tyre in a statement and called on UNESCO to intervene to protect the archaeological sites.
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