The Israeli military has leveled whole areas of towns and villages in southern Lebanon as it presses on with plans to establish control in the area during a Trump-declared ceasefire, satellite imagery, video and photos show.
Social media video and photos geolocated to locations in the region show trees coated with ash, blazes raging in fire-blackened buildings and skies filled with dark smoke. Satellite images show whole blocks and neighborhoods flattened.
The truce, which came into effect April 16, was “only a ceasefire in name,” said Bilal Saab, an associate fellow at the international think tank Chatham House who was a senior adviser at the Pentagon during the first Trump administration.
Israel appeared to be using the terms of the truce to “systematically dismantle towns and villages and other facilities, including mosques, schools, in the south near the border that they assess could be used by Hezbollah for military purposes,” Saab said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel’s military operations in Lebanon are necessary to eliminate the threat that Hezbollah poses to Israel.
“We want to get rid of that danger to our communities, to our cities. They rocket our cities all the time. They rocket our communities,” Netanyahu told CBS News’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday.
This latest aerial and ground assault in Lebanon started after Tehran-backed Hezbollah launched strikes on northern Israel following the Israeli-U.S. attack on Iran in late February. The Iran war has triggered a conflict that has consumed the region.
After President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire in Lebanon, Netanyahu said his country’s forces would remain “in an expanded security zone” stretching around 6 miles into southern Lebanon. He said this was necessary because of the danger of a Hezbollah invasion and to stop it from shelling communities in northern Israel.
The terms of the ceasefire preserved Israel’s right to “take all necessary measures in self-defense, at any time, against planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks,” according to the State Department. With the deal expiring May 17, the U.S. is expected to mediate a fresh round of talks between Israel and Lebanon on Thursday and Friday, though it is not clear who will be involved in the negotiations or if they will definitely go ahead.
Asked to comment on Israel’s operations in southern Lebanon, the State Department referred NBC News to a statement announcing the expected talks.
Hezbollah, which has not been party to the negotiations between Israel and Lebanon, has vowed to act “in defense of Lebanon and its people,” and in response to Israel’s ceasefire violations and aggression against civilians.
Abbas Awada, the mayor of Khiam, a town that lies in the security zone, said the destruction in parts of southern Lebanon became “systematic” after the truce came into effect April 16. He said the Israel Defense Forces appeared to be trying to “destroy everything related to life.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has described plans to apply a “Gaza model” to southern Lebanon, comparing the Israeli military’s tactics to those used in parts of the Palestinian enclave that remain under Israeli control. Katz has also warned that residents of southern Lebanon would not be able to return to their homes until the safety of Israelis in northern Israel was guaranteed.
A major focus of Israeli activity has been the Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil, where then-Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah delivered a victory speech in 2000 as Israel ended 18 years of occupation.
From that day, Bint Jbeil’s symbolism as a Hezbollah stronghold grew, and the town became an IDF target.
Images captured by European aeronautics and space company Airbus two days before the truce was announced showed significant damage in Bint Jbeil. Images captured 11 days later, on April 25, show a much larger proportion of the town lying in ruins.
In one video published online April 18, buildings across Bint Jbeil burst into clouds of dust in what appear to be sweeping controlled demolitions. This was consistent with a report by the Lebanese National News agency from April 19 that Israeli forces had continued to destroy “remaining homes” in the town.
In mid-April, the IDF shared an aerial image appearing to show a debris-strewn stadium where Nasrallah delivered his famous address. The Hezbollah leader was killed by Israel in 2024 along with more than 1,000 leaders and rank-and-file members.
Images shared on social media April 22 show what appear to be IDF soldiers putting up an Israeli flag in the destroyed facility.
Asked to comment on the imagery of destruction, the IDF said May 1 that as part of the effort to remove what it called the direct threat to residents of northern Israel and prevent the re-establishment of Hezbollah, its forces were operating against the group “in the area close to the border” with Israel. It also said Hezbollah was embedding military infrastructure and assets within the civilian population centers.
Meanwhile, in a statement published on Telegram on Tuesday, the IDF said it had struck more than 1,100 Hezbollah targets and killed more than 350 militants in southern Lebanon “in recent weeks” as part of what it said were “operations carried out within the framework of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”
The IDF had previously said it killed more than 200 Hezbollah members in Bint Jbeil alone in recent weeks, in addition to dismantling more than “900 terror infrastructure sites” in the area.
While demolitions began before the April 16 ceasefire, really sweeping destruction kicked off after it was declared, Mohammad Bazzi, the mayor of Bint Jbeil, told NBC News. Around 1,500 residential buildings have been completely demolished, along with schools and mosques, he said.
“Israel wants to erase our identity and heritage so people are unable to come back,” Bazzi said.
In response to Bazzi’s comments, on May 7 the IDF said it was responding to “identified military threats” in towns like Bint Jbeil. Its activities were “directed solely against specific Hezbollah military infrastructure, not against the area as a whole,” it added.
While far weaker than Israel, Hezbollah is a political and social movement in addition to a militant group, and it is rooted in Lebanese society. The group, formed in the early 1980s as a civil war consumed Lebanon, was created with support from Iran and sought to expel Israeli forces from Lebanese territory. It is designated a terrorist group by the U.S. and many other western countries.
As part of a U.N.-brokered effort to end the fighting, the Lebanese government vowed in 2024 to disarm Hezbollah. But there has been little progress on that front, even though the government moved in March to ban the group’s military activities.
Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv-based national security focused think tank who served as the deputy director general and head of the Palestinian desk at the Israeli Strategic Affairs Ministry, said there were clear strategic reasons for targeting Bint Jbeil.
But “humiliation” was also “part of the game,” said Michael, who is also a senior research fellow at the Jerusalem-based Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, noting the town’s symbolic importance to Hezbollah. He concurred with Saab, that “practically, on the ground, there is no ceasefire.”
Across the south of Lebanon, towns such as Khiam and Mais al-Jabal, both northeast of Bint Jbeil, and Jebchit, over 30 miles north, have also been heavily shelled and bombed during the truce, according to video. Satellite imagery also shows the destruction in Khiam and Mais al-Jabal.
Data published by Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, or ACLED, a U.S.-based independent conflict monitor providing real-time data for conflicts around the world, shows that since April 17, at least 120 towns and villages in Lebanon have been hit at least once by the IDF drones, missiles or artillery as well as remote explosion.
Of those, 23 had been hit more than five times, with 18 showing some level of damage since the truce was agreed. At least 10 showed extensive damage to multiple neighborhoods, buildings and roads, ACLED information showed.
That data only reflects damage caused by airstrikes, drone attacks and remote and improvised explosive device, or IED, explosions.
In one video posted to X on April 24 and geolocated by NBC News, two excavators can be seen destroying solar panels in the Christian border town of Debel, where a photo last month showed a soldier taking what appeared to be an axe to a statue of Jesus. Netanyahu and the Israeli military condemned the latter incident. The IDF said in a statement to NBC News that the damage to the solar panels was not in line with its values and that disciplinary measures had been taken.
Though most of the destruction in southern Lebanon has been in what Israel calls the security zone, some Israeli strikes have hit other areas during the ceasefire. On Thursday, the Israeli military said it had killed a senior Hezbollah commander in a Beirut suburb.
Meanwhile, the death toll in Lebanon continues to grow. More than 2,700 people have been killed since the wider war began in March, according to the Lebanese health ministry. More than 1 million people were internally displaced when the widespread Israeli bombing began, mostly from the south, although many have tried to return home since mid-April.
At least 21 people have died in Israel since the wider war began.
Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank, said she also thinks the ceasefire exists mainly “in name,” but added that “the fact that both sides are officially not withdrawing from the ceasefire means there is incentive to keep the talks going.”
She noted that it’s likely that pressure from the Trump administration is what has prevented the effort from collapsing all together.
“At least for the time being,” she said.
