The ancient city of Tyre, a UNESCO World Heritage site on Lebanon’s southern coast, shook under the weight of Israeli warplanes last night. At least four major explosions were heard across the city centre, sending plumes of smoke into the sky as residents fled for shelter. The strikes came hours after Iran issued a stark ultimatum to Israel: halt the bombardment of Gaza and southern Lebanon or face ‘severe consequences’. The warning, delivered via the Swiss embassy in Tehran, has been ignored.
For the people of Tyre, this is not a geopolitical chess move. It is the sound of their homes crumbling. A father I spoke to through the crackle of a phone line described huddling with his three children in a stairwell as the windows blew in. ‘We are not fighters,’ he said. ‘We are shopkeepers, teachers, fishermen. Why do they punish us?’
The Israeli military confirmed what it called ‘precision strikes on Hezbollah weapons depots and command centres’ in the Tyre area. But local officials describe a different scene: a residential neighbourhood near the old port, a school that had been converted into a shelter for displaced families from the south, a bakery that provided bread to hundreds. The bakery is now a crater.
Iran’s ultimatum, delivered late on Tuesday, demanded an immediate ceasefire and threatened a ‘proportional military response’ if Israel continued its operations. The timing was deliberate: it came just as the UN Security Council prepared to discuss a French-drafted resolution calling for a 21-day truce. Diplomats in New York told Reuters the Iranian move was intended to pressure Israel into a pause, but it appears to have had the opposite effect. Within hours, the jets were over Tyre.
This escalation is not happening in a vacuum. The past week has seen the deadliest exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah since the 2006 war. Over 500 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the health ministry, many of them civilians. On the Israeli side, rockets have reached as far as Haifa, disrupting daily life and sending thousands into bomb shelters. The economy, already battered by political paralysis and the pandemic, is now bracing for a full-scale conflict.
For working people in Tyre, the cost is invisible in GDP figures but stark in their wallets. A bag of rice has doubled in price. Fuel is rationed. The fishermen who once sold their catch in the city’s famous market now sit idle, their boats too risky to launch. ‘We are being squeezed by two wars,’ one union organiser told me. ‘The war of bombs and the war of prices.’
In the UK, foreign secretary David Lammy called for ‘restraint’ and ‘de-escalation’. But here in the north of England, where my own family once worked in mills and mines, those words feel hollow. Restraint is not a luxury the people of Tyre can afford. They need bread. They need shelter. They need the bombing to stop.
The Iranian ultimatum has set a clock ticking. Whether it is a bluff or a promise remains to be seen. But as the sun rises over Tyre, the smoke is still rising. And the question on every kitchen table is the same: when will this end?
