GEOFF BENNETT: On Easter Sunday, Israel carried out a fresh wave of airstrikes on Lebanon's capital, Beirut.

At least 11 people were killed across the country that day, with dozens more injured.

Israel says it's targeting the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

The total death toll in Lebanon has reportedly now exceeded 1,500.

The southern city of Tyre also came under Israeli fire on Sunday.

Tyre, like much of Lebanon's south, has been placed under forced evacuation orders by the Israeli army.

Special correspondent Simona Foltyn and videographer Adrian Hartrick traveled to Tyre and have this report.

SIMONA FOLTYN: Sixty-three-year-old Mirvat Arnaout is living Through Israel's fifth war with Lebanon, but this is the closest it has felt to home.

MIRVAT ARNAOUT, Tyre, Lebanon, Resident (through translator): At 8:00 in the morning, our neighbors woke us up.

We got up, still dressed in our pajamas, and we left the house.

We went down to the seaside.

Then the strike came at 2:10 p.m.

You see the clock has stood still since then.

SIMONA FOLTYN: This is the airstrike on Tyre's old city that hit the building next to Mirvat's.

The blast was so powerful it blew a hole into her kitchen and bedroom.

When she came back home, she found pieces of shrapnel among her broken furniture.

MIRVAT ARNAOUT (through translator): We are shocked.

We don't know what to do.

We are so tired, especially us, those suffering from sickness.

We are exhausted.

We can't sleep because of the sound of the warplanes.

SIMONA FOLTYN: In a statement to the "News Hour," the IDF said it was targeting a Hezbollah weapons storage facility.

But this was a residential building.

Mirvat knows the two families who live there and says neither had links with the Shia militant group.

MIRVAT ARNAOUT (through translator): The building has two floors, the house of Shera Faddin (ph) on the house of Yunus (ph) on the ground floor.

I know them.

We are neighbors and close friends.

SIMONA FOLTYN: Tyre is a historic coastal city founded by the Phoenicians almost 5,000 years ago, its ancient ruins designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

But now the tourist destination has earned a more sinister distinction.

It's among dozens of towns and villages in Southern Lebanon placed under forced evacuation orders by the Israeli army, which has told residents to flee.

Mirvat and her sister have decided to stay.

MIRVAT ARNAOUT (through translator): We were raised here.

We have aged here.

Our house and our land is here entire.

Lebanon is our country.

And now they want to occupy us?

SIMONA FOLTYN: That occupation has already begun.

IDF ground troops have advanced around five miles into Lebanese territory and have taken hills just south of Tyre, battling with Hezbollah fighters who are trying to slow their advance.

Last week, Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz said the IDF will occupy Lebanon up to the Litani, a river that runs around 20 miles north of its border.

ISRAEL KATZ, Israeli Defense Minister (through translator): At the end of the operation, the IDF will establish itself in the security zone inside Lebanon on a defensive line against anti-tank missiles, and will maintain security control over the entire area up to the Litani.

SIMONA FOLTYN: That area accounts for almost 10 percent of Lebanon's territory and would include Tyre.

As part of these plans to occupy the south, Israel has destroyed at least seven bridges spanning the Litani.

This is the coastal highway, the main artery connecting Lebanon's south with the rest of the country.

That's a Lebanese army checkpoint right behind me, and in front of me is one of the bridges that was destroyed in an Israeli strike.

Now, Israel claims that the destruction of bridges like these serve to prevent Hezbollah fighters and weapons from reaching the border.

But, in reality, what it has done is to isolate the south and impede the movement of civilians.

Only one bridge is left to connect Tyre to the rest of the country.

The town's deputy mayor, Alwan Sharafeddine is preparing for the worst.

ALWAN SHARAFEDDINE, Deputy Mayor of Tyre, Lebanon (through translator): There's fear that if that last remaining bridge is targeted, we are headed towards a humanitarian catastrophe because our current provisions only last for about a week.

SIMONA FOLTYN: The flow of aid has been reduced to a trickle after Israel killed three U.N.

peacekeepers and 54 Lebanese first responders in the past month.

ALWAN SHARAFEDDINE (through translator): The problem is that the supply convoys that used to come from international agencies are not getting Israeli permission to cross.

If they don't receive Israeli assurances that they won't be struck, there won't be any aid coming.

SIMONA FOLTYN: Around 15 percent of Tyre's 60,000 residents remain, in addition to 17,000 people who have fled towns and villages that have already fallen into Israeli hands.

Some have found refuge in schools like these.

Khadija and Nami are from the border village of Blida, now occupied by the IDF.

They show me videos of their two houses, both of which were destroyed during the previous war back in 2024.

KHADIJA YOUSEF, Displaced from Blida (through translator): One house had three floors.

The other one had two.

Both are gone.

It's all messed up.

The furniture inside is gone.

I have nothing left.

SIMONA FOLTYN: When a cease-fire was signed at the end of 2024, the family hoped they could slowly rebuild.

NAMI DAHER, Displaced from Blida (through translator): I put up solar panels because there was no electricity.

I brought a water tank.

I had fixed up one room.

Things were going OK.

But then the war started again.

SIMONA FOLTYN: Many Shia Muslims in Lebanon's south support the resistance, which is what Hezbollah is called here.

With the Lebanese army withdrawing, they see the group as their only protector against Israel's invasion.

NAMI DAHER (through translator): The resistance is doing a good job and they won't stand down.

They won't let them occupy the country.

SIMONA FOLTYN: Do you have any hope that you can go back?

KHADIJA YOUSEF (through translator): God willing, we will go back and we will rebuild and make it more beautiful.

May God protect those young men.

NAMI DAHER (through translator): We want to go back to our land, even if it's destroyed, even if we have to set up a tent.

That's our goal.

SIMONA FOLTYN: But Israel has no intention to allow civilians like Nami and Khadija to return.

Defense Minister Katz has vowed to replicate Israel's Gaza doctrine in Lebanon.

ISRAEL KATZ (through translator): All houses in villages near the border in Lebanon will be destroyed, according to the model of Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza, to remove once and for all the threats near the border to northern residents.

SIMONA FOLTYN: The IDF has already begun to make good on these promises.

It has detonated at least two border villages in what seems to be a scorched-earth policy aimed at punishing Shia Muslims and making their areas uninhabitable.

The war has uprooted more than a million people in Lebanon.

This Syrian family fled instability back home and has now been displaced again.

They found no space in government-run shelters.

BADRIA HASSAN KANAAN, Displaced From Syria (through translator): The house we were living in was destroyed.

There's no space for us.

They have registered us, but there's no space.

We are living by the grace of God.

SIMONA FOLTYN: The tarps offer little protection from the rain and cold, let alone from Israeli bombs.

But the family feels they have nowhere else to go.

BADRIA HASSAN KANAAN (through translator): Where in the north should we go?

They won't take us.

Should we go back to Syria?

There's no money.

SIMONA FOLTYN: Many of those left in Tyre are sick, elderly, or lack the means to leave.

But, for others, the decision to remain is a political statement underpinned by a desire to stay on their land until the end.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Simona Foltyn in Tyre, Southern Lebanon.

GEOFF BENNETT: And, tomorrow, we will have a report from Israel, where people have been marking the Passover and Easter holidays under the shadow of war.