Israel has carried out a lot of air strikes across Lebanon, killing and wounding hundreds of people. Officials say that the war against the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah is still going on even though there is a ceasefire in Iran.
Israel said it was the biggest wave of air strikes in this conflict, hitting more than 100 of what it called Hezbollah command centers and military sites in just 10 minutes.
The southern suburbs of Beirut, southern Lebanon, and the eastern Bekaa Valley were all hit.
The Lebanese health ministry said that at least 112 people had died and more than 830 had been hurt.
Hours after the biggest air strike on Beirut, emergency workers were still looking through the damaged buildings. Among the rubble, there were glimpses of lives that had been cut short: pictures of happy families, clothes, and unfinished schoolwork.
Abdelkader Mahfouz was visiting his brother, who had been hurt.There were a lot of body parts here. People are the only ones getting hurt. What should the people do? He told the India BBC News, “We can’t do anything.”
After Pakistan, which had helped the US and Iran reach an agreement, said that the ceasefire did not cover the conflict in Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office denied the claim.
Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary for US President Donald Trump, also said in Washington that Lebanon was not part of the deal.
Hezbollah, which hasn’t claimed any attacks since the deal was made public, said the group had the right to respond and told families who had to leave their homes to wait for an official ceasefire announcement before trying to go back home.
The Lebanese presidency said it would keep working to “include Lebanon in regional peace.”
The most recent flare-up in the long-running war between Hezbollah and Israel happened when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in response to the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the start of the war. This was also in response to the almost daily Israeli attacks on Lebanon, which have continued even though a ceasefire was agreed upon in November 2024.
The Lebanese health ministry says that the war has killed more than 1,500 people, including 130 children, but it doesn’t say how many of those people were soldiers and how many were civilians.
Israel says it has killed about 1,100 Hezbollah fighters.
More than 1.2 million people have had to leave their homes, which is one in five of the population. Most of them are from Shia Muslim communities.
Israeli troops have destroyed villages near the border in order to create what they call a “security buffer zone” to destroy Hezbollah’s infrastructure and drive its fighters away. This has made people worried that some places may still be occupied after the war is over and that many people may never be able to go back.
Israeli officials had said they would keep fighting in Lebanon even if they reached an agreement with Iran. But Israeli media sources who spoke to military officials in the last few days said that the army did not plan to move further in their invasion and that they would not be able to disarm Hezbollah by force.
People are surprised by Hezbollah’s military strength in this conflict because it was thought that the group had been greatly weakened in their last war. The group has often sent rockets and drones into northern Israel, but they have fought Israeli soldiers on the ground in southern Lebanon.
But in Lebanon, Hezbollah has been heavily criticized because many people think it started a war that the country didn’t want and is protecting the interests of its Iranian backer. But a lot of Lebanese Shia still support the group.
The war has caused a crisis in the country, and the displacement crisis has made things worse. Many people are sleeping in makeshift tents in public places and even in cars because schools that have been turned into shelters are full. Families moving to other communities has made sectarian tensions worse, and people are afraid that they could also be attacked by Israelis.
The Lebanese government said it would disarm Hezbollah after the ceasefire deal in 2024. Hezbollah was formed in the 1980s in response to Israel’s occupation of Lebanon during the 15-year Lebanese civil war. But the group hasn’t talked about what will happen to its weapons yet.
Former army chief Joseph Aoun, who is now president, said he would not use force because it could make things worse and lead to violence. In response to the latest escalation, his government made the historic announcement that it was willing to talk directly with Israel, even though the two countries do not have diplomatic relations. But Israel has not yet taken up the offer.
