People of Nabatieh are told to leave, adding to mass displacement, and multiple airstrikes are heard in capital

The Israeli military ordered evacuations of a Lebanese city and other communities north of a UN-declared buffer zone on Thursday, signalling that it may widen a ground operation launched earlier this week against the militant group Hezbollah.

Israel told people to leave Nabatieh, a provincial capital in southern Lebanon, and several towns and villages north of the Litani River, which formed the northern edge of the border zone established by the UN security council after the 2006 war in a resolution that both sides have accused the other of violating.