TYRE, June 10 -- The order to leave reached the church district this time. On Tuesday the Israeli military told the whole of this ancient coastal city to clear out, and for the first time the warning named the Christian quarter, where families driven from their homes by months of war had been sheltering in parish halls because they believed those streets, at least, would be spared. Within hours, a public housing block in Tyre was in ruins.

Lebanese state media put the death toll from that strike at nine, with 28 wounded, figures that Al Jazeera reported kept shifting through the afternoon as rescuers reached the lower floors. None of the numbers could be independently verified, and the people compiling them were the same local officials ...