In areas of southern Lebanon it has occupied since agreeing last week to a ceasefire with Hezbollah, the Israeli army has been destroying homes it says were used as outposts by the Iran-backed militant group.
But the demolitions are happening on such a wide scale that residents, Lebanese officials and UN peacekeepers are increasingly worried that large numbers of people displaced by the latest war will have nowhere to return if the fragile truce holds.
From a hill overlooking Beit Lif, about 4 km (2.5 mi) north of Lebanon’s border with Israel, it could be seen that the village, once home to a few thousand people, had been almost entirely flattened.
“They were demolishing it gradually until they reached the main square and now, as you can see, there are no more houses,” said Hassan Sweidan, a resident of a neighbouring village.
Lebanese officials plan to raise the issue of widespread demolitions on Thursday when they hold ceasefire talks with their Israeli counterparts in Washington, part of the first direct negotiations between the two countries in decades.
Because of security concerns and limited access, neither UN peacekeepers nor Lebanese officials have been able to conduct a detailed survey of the villages where demolitions are taking place. But observers have described entire residential neighborhoods in multiple villages being systematically destroyed.
Lebanese journalist killed in Israeli strike
A Lebanese journalist was killed Wednesday in an Israeli airstrike on a house in southern Lebanon where she had taken cover while reporting on the Israel-Hezbollah war. Her body was only retrieved from the rubble hours later, rescue workers said.
The daily Al-Akhbar newspaper says its reporter Amal Khalil was killed in the southern village of al-Tiri. Khalil had been covering the conflict in Lebanon between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group that resumed in early March, in the shadow of the US-Israeli war in Iran. She took cover in the house in al-Tiri after an earlier Israeli airstrike hit near the car she was travelling in with another colleague.
The Lebanese health ministry said the first strike killed two people. A second Israeli strike then hit the house in al-Tiri where Khalil and her colleague Zeinab Faraj had taken cover.
At first, rescue workers were able to get to Faraj, who was seriously wounded, and retrieve the bodies of two killed in the first airstrike. But they were fired at by Israeli forces, so they were forced to halt attempts to reach Khalil, the ministry said.
Khalil remained under the rubble for hours before the Lebanese army, civil defence and the Lebanese Red Cross were able to get to the scene hours later. Khalil's body was retrieved shortly before midnight, at least six hours after the strike.
Also read: Lebanon, Israel to resume direct talks to extend ceasefire
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