Lebanon

France’s president Emmanuel Macron said Lebanon’s fight against threats to its security is ‘just’, while stressing that no violation of sovereignty can be justified. His comments come as fighting escalates between Israel and Hezbollah, with more than 1,000 people killed and 1.1 million displaced in Lebanon.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog was forced to take cover as a missile struck nearby shortly after he gave a press conference in the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona. During the speech, Herzog aid Israel cannot return to last year’s ceasefire and must secure “strategic depth inside Lebanon.”

Lebanon fears that Israel’s attack on Qasmiyeh Bridge, a key crossing linking the south to the rest of the country, could be a “prelude to a ground invasion”. The damage caused in the attack could cut off access for civilians, aid and supplies.

Families displaced by Israeli strikes are sheltering in tents across Beirut, as rain falls, with residents describing difficult conditions, limited aid and uncertainty over when they can return.

Trump calls NATO cowardly over lack of support for Iran war, says Strait of Hormuz should be protected ‘by other nations who use it’.

Beirut, Lebanon and Gaza City, Palestine – Along Beirut’s downtown waterfront, Alaa is looking for somewhere to rest his head.

The Syrian refugee, originally from the occupied Golan Heights, is now homeless. He explained that he had already spent the day wandering around the Lebanese capital trying to find shelter.

He used to live in Dahiyeh – the southern suburbs of Beirut that have been pummelled by Israeli attacks, which have now killed more than 1,000 across Lebanon.

Now, he’s just looking for somewhere he can be safe. And in that context, Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim festival that began on Friday, is far from his mind.

When asked if he had any plans for Eid, he replied in the negative. Instead, his focus was on getting a tent.

“I got rejected from staying in a school, then I went to sleep on the corniche,” Alaa said. “Then people from the municipality told me to come here to downtown Beirut’s waterfront.”

Alaa wasn’t able to find a tent and is sleeping in the open air for now. But others in the area have, transforming a downtown more famous for its expensive restaurants and bars into a tent city for those displaced by the fighting. Across Lebanon, more than a million people have been displaced.

Lebanese are uncertain when this war will end, particularly as they have barely recovered from the conflict with Israel that ran between October 2023 and November 2024.

It makes celebrations difficult – a common theme across the countries affected by the current conflict.

In Iran, now in its third week of US-Israeli attacks – with no sign of an immediate end and an economic crisis that preceded the conflict, people are struggling to afford any of the items typically bought during the holiday season.

And it is potentially dangerous for people to shop at places like Tehran’s grand bazaar, which has been damaged by the bombing.

The religious element of Eid adds an extra sensitivity for antigovernment Iranians, some of whom now see any sign of religiosity as support for the Islamic Republic. The fact that Nowruz – the Persian New Year – falls on Friday this year means that some in the antigovernment camp will be focused on that celebration instead, and eschewing any events to mark Eid.

Struggling in Gaza

Many Palestinians in Gaza want to celebrate Eid, but the enclave’s economic crisis, brought on by Israel’s genocidal war, makes it difficult.

Israeli restrictions on the entry of goods into Gaza, which have increased since the war against Iran started, have driven up prices further, including the cost of children’s toys.

Khaled Deeb, a 62-year-old living in a partially destroyed home in Gaza City, had ventured into the central Remal market, curious to see how expensive fruit and vegetables had gotten in the run-up to Eid.

“From the outside, the Eid atmosphere looks lively and vibrant,” Khaled said, pointing to the crowded market. “But financially, things are extremely bad. People have all left their homes and are now living in tents and displacement. Everyone has lost everything during the war.”

Khaled says he can’t afford the fruit and vegetables, and will have to go without. Only “kings” could buy them, he said, not “poor and exhausted people” like him.

What makes it worse is his memory of what things were like before the war, when he owned a supermarket.

“During Eid, I would give my daughters and sisters gifts of more than 3,000 shekels ($950) when visiting them, not to mention preparing the house, buying Eid clothes for my children, and sweets and chocolates to welcome the holiday,” Khaled said. None of that is going to happen this Eid, even with a ceasefire in Gaza.

His sentiment was echoed by Shireen Shreim, a mother of three.

“Our joy in Eid is incomplete,” she said, as she wandered through the market. “We have come out of two years of war with immense hardship, only to face a life where even the most basic necessities are unavailable.”

And with Israel showing few signs that it is willing to stop violently attacking Palestinians, as well as other countries in the region, Shireen has no idea when Gaza will ever be rebuilt.

“I live in an apartment with completely hollowed-out walls,” she explained. “My husband and I put up tarps and wood, and we are continuing our lives. We are much better off than others.”

“Every time I return home, I feel sad,” she added. “As you can see, people are living in nylon and cloth tents in the streets, without any humane shelter. How will these people celebrate Eid?”

Back in Beirut, Karim Safieddine, a political researcher and organiser, is stoic. He said he would be celebrating Eid with his extended family, despite the difficult circumstances.

“Although we have been displaced by the war, we believe that consolidating these family bonds and creating a sense of communal solidarity is the first and foremost condition to survive this war,” Karim said.

“Without solidarity, we won’t be able to build a society, a country,” he said. “I think that’s a starting point for many people attempting to really create a sense of forward-looking vision for a country under bombs, without any form of toxic positivity, of course.”

Several central neighbourhoods in Beirut have been attacked in a series of Israeli strikes. Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr has been at the scene of one attack that flattened a multi-storey residential building.

For years, Beirut’s southern suburb has been spoken about as though it were a world apart: A Hezbollah bastion, a target, a warning, or a battlefield. But in Arabic, the word “dahiyeh” simply means “the suburb”.

The word itself is ordinary. What makes it extraordinary in Lebanon is its history.

When the Lebanese speak of Dahiyeh, they do not mean any suburb of their capital city. They mean southern Beirut in particular – a dense belt of neighbourhoods that grew from villages, fields, informal housing and municipal edges into a major extension of the city.

Dahiyeh – in size nearly as big as municipal Beirut – has been shaped by migration and displacement in the past 50 years. While many moved there in search of work or housing, most of the others were pushed there by wars, political unrest, evictions and a general sense of being neglected by the Lebanese state.

The social geography of Lebanon, which gained independence from French colonisers in 1943, began to be transformed in 1948 when Israel’s establishment saw the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their land in what is commonly referred to as the Nakba. After Israel’s further occupation of Palestinian lands in 1967 and the expulsion of Palestinian fighters from Jordan in 1970, southern Lebanon and parts of Beirut became increasingly bound up with the Palestinian national movement.

Beirut’s ‘belt of misery’

Dahiyeh’s growth, however, accelerated after 1975, when the Lebanese civil war broke out. People displaced from other parts of Beirut moved south. The subsequent Israeli attacks and invasions in 1978 and 1982 drove more people to the edge of the capital. In that sense, Dahiyeh was not just a destination for “migrants”. It was also a refuge for the uprooted, the poor, and those repeatedly forced to start over.

Studies by scholars such as Mona Harb, professor of urban studies and politics at the American University of Beirut (AUB), show how a common noun – Dahiyeh – gradually evolved into a distinct political space: A stigmatised periphery marked in the Lebanese imagination as Beirut’s “belt of misery” that hardened into a territory with its own social and political significance. Today, it is part of Greater Beirut, woven into the capital geographically, economically and socially, even if the country’s politics may have treated the area as an outlier.

Harb’s work explicitly frames the southern suburb as a politically produced urban territory rather than just a space outside Beirut. To understand how that happened, one has to begin with the making of modern Lebanon.

Under the French Mandate, and later through the political order consolidated at independence in 1943, power in Lebanon was distributed through a sectarian system that heavily favoured the established elites, especially the Maronite Christians, who dominated the presidency and other key positions. The system not only created inequality, but also formalised and reproduced it.

Rural Lebanon, especially the south and the Bekaa Valley, remained underdeveloped and politically neglected for decades. Among those most affected were Lebanon’s Shia community, who were disproportionately concentrated in the poorer agricultural regions and had less access to state investments, infrastructure and patronage than the more privileged urban and mountainous centres. Scholars say it was not simply a temporary developmental gap, but a long history of marginalisation that defined the country’s politics.

Israeli attacks on Palestinian positions inside Lebanon repeatedly hit the surrounding Lebanese communities as well, mainly in the south. For the Shia in southern Lebanon, these attacks sharpened a bitter awareness: They were living on the front lines of a bitter regional conflict, while they were also being denied equal economic rights and meaningful political inclusion in Lebanon itself.

Out of that reality emerged a new form of Shia political mobilisation centred not only on identity, but also on deprivation, dignity and state neglect. That mobilisation found its earliest expression in Harakat al-Mahroumin, the Movement of the Deprived, founded by Imam Musa al-Sadr in the 1970s. Al-Sadr became a towering figure of modern Lebanese Shia politics because he gave social, religious and political forms to grievances building up for decades. That movement later grew an armed wing: Amal.

Al-Sadr’s mysterious disappearance during a 1978 trip to Libya remains unresolved and politically contested to this day. What is not contested is his historical importance. He helped turn the Shia of Lebanon from a neglected rural underclass into an organised political constituency demanding equal rights, representation, and a defining national presence.

The rise of Hezbollah

The 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon changed the Shia political landscape yet again. Israel’s siege of Beirut, the departure of Palestinian icon Yasser Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization forces, and Syria’s desire to dominate Lebanon all intensified divisions within Lebanese society.

Amal, which meanwhile had grown closer to Damascus to get weapons, money and political backing, remained a major force. But new Islamist movements emerged from within and around it, shaped by the Israeli occupation, disillusionment with older leaderships, and increasing support from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, especially in the Bekaa region.

Over time, these currents crystallised into Hezbollah. The split within the Shia movement was less theological and more about political strategy, defined by questions over aligning more closely with Syria, solidarity with the Palestinians, and general resistance against the Israeli occupation. Differences between Amal and Hezbollah over these questions turned violent in the 1980s, an intra-Shia fighting that Lebanese often recall as “a war among brothers”.

As Hezbollah grew stronger, Dahiyeh became much more than a residential belt. It turned into an urban heartland of a social and political force. Hezbollah built institutions there: Offices, schools, clinics, welfare networks and media infrastructure. Amal also had a presence, but the common shorthand that reduces Dahiyeh to a “Hezbollah stronghold” always conceals more than it reveals.

Today, Dahiyeh hosts a Shia majority, but also has a small minority of Palestinians and other Lebanese communities, including Christians. It bleeds physically into what is known as Greater Beirut, including its Christian and mixed areas. So when the suburb is bombed, it is not some isolated military island that is hit, but a deeply inhabited part of urban Beirut.

That is precisely why Dahiyeh is so central to the Israeli military’s thinking. During the 2006 war, large sections of the southern suburb, especially Haret Hreik, were devastated by Israel. The destruction became so emblematic that Israeli military strategists came up with what came to be known as the Dahiyeh Doctrine: Use of overwhelming force and large-scale destruction of areas associated with an armed group, with the aim of generating deterrence and putting pressure on residents supporting the group. Rights activists and legal scholars say the doctrine violates international humanitarian law, as civilian neighbourhoods and infrastructure do not become legitimate targets simply because an armed group is embedded among the population.

That Israeli pattern, however, has intensified since October 2023, when a genocidal war on Gaza and attacks on Lebanon began. Meanwhile, the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli strike in late 2024 eroded Dahiyeh’s resistance. That erosion is more visible in the ongoing Israeli attacks on Beirut and southern Lebanon, where more than a million people have registered as displaced since March 2. The old formula – that Dahiyeh was the principal red line and that any strikes there could be deterred by Hezbollah’s threats of retaliatory strikes on several Israeli cities – no longer holds.

Once again, Dahiyeh has become a focal point of the war, with repeated bombardment sending plumes of smoke over a place that many outsiders still describe as a world apart, but which is in fact woven into Beirut’s daily life. Built over decades by the poor, the migrants and the repeatedly uprooted – and shaped by the politics of marginalisation against those whom al‑Sadr once named “the deprived” – Dahiyeh has long served as both a refuge and a front line. Today, it is again being made to carry the costs of a conflict larger than itself.

Wave of Israeli air attacks launched as ground offensive widens in south where Hezbollah are fighting Israeli forces.

Israel has attacked a building in Bashoura, a neighbourhood in the heart of Beirut, Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported, with a blast and smoke rising over the area shortly after Israel issued an evacuation threat for the site.

The attack was part of a deadly wave of Israeli strikes across Lebanon that killed at least 20 people and wounded 24 on Wednesday, according to the country’s Ministry of Public Health, with raids stretching from the capital through southern and eastern parts of the country, a devastating front in the wider United States-Israel war against Iran embroiling the region.

At least six people were killed in the air strikes in Beirut, with dozens injured.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Beirut, Zeina Khodr, reported that intense Israeli attacks hit multiple regions across Lebanon, including central Beirut, overnight.

Speaking from in front of a 15-storey building struck in one of the attacks, Khodr said its lower floors had been targeted a week earlier. In the early hours, however, the structure was completely demolished, with the Israeli army claiming Hezbollah had stored cash there.

“You can see the widespread damage across this whole neighbourhood,” Khodr said.

Israel’s military said it had launched what it described as limited ground operations in southern Lebanon, issuing evacuation threats for residents of four towns near the Zahrani River and the Tyre area, warning them to head north immediately.

Lebanon’s NNA also reported strikes on Tyre and the nearby area of Al-Burj Al-Shamali in the pre-dawn hours.

At least four people were killed in an Israeli attack that targeted four houses in the town of Sahmar in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

The intensifying assault has now killed at least 912 people in Lebanon, including 111 children, and wounded more than 2,200 since Israel launched its offensive on March 2, according to Lebanese Health Ministry figures.

More than one million people have been forced from their homes. The United Nations warned on Tuesday that Israeli attacks on residential buildings and civilian infrastructure may constitute war crimes under international humanitarian law.

A spokesperson for the UN human rights office said that deliberately targeting civilians or civilian objects “amounts to a war crime”, adding that Israel’s sweeping displacement orders for southern Lebanon may themselves violate international law.

Khodr said that Hezbollah’s secretary general, Naim Qassem, last night laid down conditions for the war to end, including Israel stopping attacks, displaced people being permitted to return to their homes, those detained over the last two years by Israel being released and the Israeli army withdrawing.

Across southern Lebanon, Khodr said Hezbollah was “still present in the area, trying to repel the Israeli army’s advance”, adding that Hezbollah’s aim was not just territorial control of the region, but preventing Israel from gaining new positions in the country.

The conflict was ignited on February 28 when US and Israeli forces assassinated Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran, prompting Hezbollah to launch rockets into northern Israel on March 2.

Israel has since killed more than 2,000 people across Iran and Lebanon in its attacks.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, a staunch Israeli ally, added his voice to growing international concern, warning that Israel’s ground offensive in Lebanon was an “error” that risked worsening what he described as an already dire humanitarian situation.

BEIRUT —  Iran’s top security official, Ali Larijani, has been killed in an Israeli airstrike, a move that represents a palpable hit to an Iranian leadership that has shown little interest in compromise after almost three weeks of war with the U.S. and Israel.

Killing Larijani, who led Iran as de facto wartime leader after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei died on the first day of the war, eliminates a veteran official seen as the consummate insider despite not having the religious credentials for the Islamic Republic’s highest offices. Israel, in an announcement Tuesday, said the attack occurred the night before.

For all his bellicose comments since the war began, Larijani was also seen as a pragmatist, and observers say his death might strengthen the resolve of what’s left of Iran’s leadership, rather than induce a willingness to compromise.

His post as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council gave Larijani control of the country’s top security body, where he tasked government forces with subduing anti-regime protests in January. Thousands of Iranians were killed.

Also killed in the Israeli strikes was Gen. Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij, the volunteer auxiliary wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and an integral part of the state’s ability to keep order.

“Larijani and the Basij commander were eliminated overnight and joined the head of the annihilation program, Khamenei, and all the eliminated members of the axis of evil, in the depths of hell,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement Tuesday.

Israeli officials have employed “axis of evil” to refer to Iran and its allies, including the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

Larijani had served as parliamentary speaker for 12 years and became the point man on nuclear negotiations as well as relations with allies such as China and Russia. He often acted as the government’s representative in the media.

Iranian officials confirmed that Larijani and Soleimani had been killed. They said Larijani’s son, the head of his office and several guards were also killed in the strikes.

Soon after Katz’s announcement, Iranian authorities released an undated note said to have been written by Larijani in which he honored Iranian sailors killed in a U.S. attack. The image of the note was also posted to Larijani’s account on X.

There was no explanation why the note was released and whether it is signified Larijani was still alive.

“We are undermining this regime in the hope of giving the Iranian people an opportunity to remove it,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu and President Trump have repeatedly called on ordinary Iranians to topple the government.

Though assassinating Larijani counts as yet another intelligence coup for Israel and the U.S., both may come to regret the loss of a figure who, despite his defiant rhetoric since the war began Feb. 28, was considered by some analysts as a realist.

His killing adds to the evisceration of Iran’s upper echelons, raising the question of who is left to negotiate an end to the war, or have enough influence to make Iran’s deep state accept compromise.

Some observers say that’s the point.

“Why did the Israelis take out Larijani in this moment? Because Netanyahu is focused on blocking Trump’s pathways for a ceasefire and follow-up negotiations with Iran,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior policy fellow at the European Council for Foreign Relations, adding that “Larijani would have been the man to get that job done.”

Khamenei’s assassination, Geranmayeh said, had already empowered more hard-line figures in government, and Larijani’s death “could act as an accelerator to that path.”

“Israel seems to be turning its attention to targeting those that could push for a political solution to the current crisis,” she said.

Larijani’s death would add to the murkiness surrounding Iran’s leadership. After Khamenei was killed and it remained unclear who would replace him, Trump added to the uncertainty by saying that the country’s new leader would need his approval, but also that the U.S. had killed many of the leaders whom he would have deemed acceptable.

After Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was named the new supreme leader, Trump expressed his displeasure but repeatedly dodged questions about what the transition under the younger Khamenei would mean for the U.S. war effort.

After the elder Khamenei’s death, Larijani emerged as a high-profile voice for Iran, saying that Trump must “pay the price” for the U.S. strikes on the country.

In response, Trump acted as if he didn’t know who Larijani was.

“I have no idea what he’s talking about, who he is. I couldn’t care less,” Trump told CBS News.

Benjamin Radd, a political scientist and senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, said Larijani was perceived to be “the last of the competent bunch” within the Iranian leadership — an intellectual who had a complex understanding of the geopolitical reality on the ground, who had negotiated with the U.S. in the past, and who was “adept at maneuvering” all the various parts of the Iranian power structure.

Radd said Larijani “lost that mantle of being the pragmatist” when he strongly backed the deadly January crackdown on protesters, for which he was “more responsible than anyone else.”

He “absolutely was responsible for a tremendous amount of carnage and death and destruction,” Radd said.

And yet, with his death, “all of that diplomatic, institutional experience” that he did have “is gone” from the Iranian leadership, Radd said.

Those left in power, he said, are “generally not the sharpest people, they’re not the people who understand the subtleties of diplomacy, of what negotiating with the U.S. is like.”

Bulos reported from Beirut and Rector from Colorado.

The Israeli military has launched waves of air raids across southern Lebanon after announcing “limited and targeted ground operations” against Hezbollah positions. Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr is in Marjayoun, which has been turned into an active war zone following clashes.

A building in the northern Israeli city of Nahariyya caught fire on Monday after a rocket attack launched from Lebanon.

‘For 40 years, we’re protecting you’: US President Donald Trump criticises allies’ reluctance to commit forces to open the key waterway for Gulf oil exports.

Israeli forces have attacked multiple towns in southern Lebanon after announcing “limited and targeted ground operations” against Hezbollah. Israel has warned residents will not be able to return to their homes until the military says so.

March 16 (UPI) — Emergency services in the United Arab Emirates were battling a major blaze at the country’s strategically key Fujairah oil export hub on Monday morning after the second drone strike on the facility in two days.

Emirate of Fujairah authorities said in a post on X that no one had been hurt in the attack on the Fujairah Industrial Petroleum Zone and that efforts were ongoing to bring the fire under control. They appealed to people to refrain from spreading misinformation.

“Civil defense teams in the Emirate immediately responded to the incident and are continuing their efforts to control it. The competent authorities call on the public not to circulate rumours and to obtain information only from official sources,” wrote the Fujairah Media Office.

The facility is strategically important because it is the only oil export terminal on the UAE’s eastern coast, located on the Gulf of Oman, the “good” end of the Strait of Hormuz.

Critically, it means oil tankers servicing the port do not need to run the gauntlet of the 21-mile-wide sea lane that Iran has effectively closed.

An approximately 250-mile-long cross-country oil pipeline from Habshan, a key onshore field 80 miles southwest of Abu Dhabi, feeds as much as 1.8 million barrels per day of crude into Fujairah.

However, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened ports, docks, military facilities and other “legitimate” U.S. targets in the UAE while the state media uged workers and residents in and around Fujairah, Jebel Ali and Khalifa ports to evacuate due to the presence of U.S. military forces.

Monday’s incident, following on from a separate strike and fire on Saturday, highlighted how exposed Fujairah — one of the world’s key crude oil and fuel storage hubs — was to Iranian threats.

The UAE has been repeatedly targeted by Iranian drones and missiles since the United States launched its airborne offensive against Iran on Feb. 28.

A drone attack earlier Monday that forced the temporary grounding of all flights at Dubai International Airport after a fire erupted in a fuel tank close by and an announcement by Israel that it was nowhere near done with hitting Iran indicated the war was likely headed into a third week.

Israel also announced plans for an expansion of its ground offensive in Lebanon against Hezbollah operatives and strongholds after the Iranian proxy group attacked Israel with rockets and missiles on March 2, two days into the war.

An Israeli bombing campaign and targeted actions by ground forces has already forced hundreds of thousands of civilians in the country to flee their homes and killed more than 850, more than 170 of them women and children, according to the Lebanon Health Ministry.

European Union foreign ministers were set to meet on Monday in Brussels to discuss the situation in the region as oil prices continued their upward trajectory with the benchmark Brent crude futures briefly hitting $106 per barrel during trade on Monday.

Shipping of oil, gas and all cargo through the Strait of Hormuz remains stalled despite calls by U.S. President Donald Trump at the weekend for countries that get their oil from Gulf producers to step up and help restart movement of ships in and out of the Persian Gulf.

March 16 (UPI) — The Israeli military announced Monday that soldiers were conducting “limited and targeted ground operations” in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah, amid its larger war against the militant organization’s backer, Iran.

Israeli troops were reported in Lebanon earlier this month, but Monday’s announcement appears to formalize and broaden the mission. The language in the announcement was also consistent with other reports that Israel may be planning to significantly expand its ground operation.

“This activity is part of broader defensive efforts to establish and strengthen a forward defensive posture, which includes the dismantling of terrorist infrastructure and the elimination of terrorists operating in the area, to create an additional layer of security for residents of northern Israel,” the IDF said in a social media statement.

Israel has been attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon for years, and launched a ground operation there in October 2024 that ended with a fragile cease-fire, with both sides accusing the other of violations. Fighting erupted again late last month after the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran.

Specifics about the ground operation were minimal, including the day it began, with the IDF stating on Telegram that the troops entered Lebanon “in recent days.”

Troops from the 91st Division are conducting what the Israel Defense Forces called “limited and targeted ground operations” against Iran-backed Hezbollah strongholds.

Videos of the operation taken from apparent night-vision cameras worn by the soldiers and distributed by the IDF online show Israeli forces and military vehicles seemingly operating in southern Lebanon.

The operation was aimed at enhancing the forward defense area and was part of broader efforts to strengthen Israel’s forward defensive posture, the IDF said, which is consistent with reporting by Axios that Israel plans to seize all of Lebanon south of the Litani River and will be a major operation.

The IDF said airstrikes were conducted before the soldiers of the 91st Division moved in, with a Hezbollah site attacked on Saturday. Troops on Sunday searched the area and found a storage facility housing dozens of rockets, explosive devices and guns, it said in a Monday update on the operation.

Photos included in the release show rockets laid upon a couch inside a debris-filled residence.

Two Hezbollah operatives were also killed, it said, stating the militants had advanced on the Israeli troops.

“The IDF will continue to operate with determination against the Hezbollah terrorist organization following its deliberate decision to attack Israel on behalf of the Iranian regime,” the IDF said.

“The IDF will not tolerate any harm to the residents of the State of Israel.”

Neighbourhoods in Beirut’s southern suburbs have been left in ruins by Israeli bombing attacks. Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah infrastructure but hundreds of thousands of people have been forcibly displaced.

Families displaced by Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon have found shelter at the Saints Peter and Paul Monastery in the village of Qattine. Clergy there opened their doors to those fleeing the violence, offering food, shelter and a place to pray as thousands across the south remain unable to return home.

The Israeli army says its forces are striking key sites in southern Lebanon, as fierce clashes with Hezbollah continue near the town of Khiam.

The Israeli military says its troops have begun ground operations in southern Lebanon as fighting against Hezbollah intensifies around the strategic southern town of Khiam.

At least three air strikes struck the city of Khiam, Al Jazeera Arabic reported on Monday.

Khiam, a stronghold of Hezbollah, is strategically located and is seen as a gateway to southern Lebanon. The latest war started after Hezbollah fired rockets in response to the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Hezbollah had not attacked Israel since the 2024 ceasefire despite repeated Israeli violations of the United States-brokered deal.

On Monday morning, two Israeli air raids targeted the town of Yater, Al Jazeera Arabic reported. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

Israel also launched raids on Burj Qalawiya, Sultaniya and Chaqra, also in southern Lebanon, according to Al Jazeera Arabic. Two raids were also conducted on the towns of Qantara and as-Sawana.

The Israeli army, in a post on X, said on Monday that its troops in recent days were “focused on ground operations on key targets in southern Lebanon to expand the forward defence area”.

“This operation is part of the effort to establish the forward defence, which includes destroying terrorist infrastructure and eliminating terrorists,” it added.

Importance of Khiam

Khiam sits on high ground just a few kilometres from the Israeli border and the Litani River, giving it a commanding view over northern Israel and nearby Lebanese plains.

Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said a “major battle was under way” in and around Khiam. “The elevation of Khiam for both sides gives them a strategic advantage,” she said.

Moreover, Khodr noted the town lies on a “long and important junction … a road that leads to the eastern and western sectors of southern Lebanon”.

“One of the roads leads to the Bekaa Valley too in eastern Lebanon, another area where Hezbollah has influence,” she said.

“What Israel has been trying to do is really cut the supply lines and the difficult capabilities of Hezbollah, so it’s unable to bring in more weapons and fighters to areas south of the Litani River.”

More than 800,000 people, including women and children, have been forced to flee from their homes as the Israeli army issued evacuation orders for many neighbourhoods in southern Lebanon, as well as the capital, Beirut.

Israeli attacks in Lebanon have so far killed at least 850 people, among them 107 children and 66 women.

Displaced families in Sidon are turning their vehicles into makeshift shelters, covering them with tarp to shield themselves from the rain after failing to find space in local schools. Hundreds of thousands have been forced from their homes as Israel’s offensive in Lebanon intensifies.

Thousands in Paris protest military operations in the Middle East. One of more than 85 coordinated protests across France. The rally opposed US and Israeli military operations in Iran, Lebanon, and Palestine.

Demonstrators gathered in Toronto for Al-Quds Day, denouncing US-Israeli attacks on Iran and Lebanon.