Israel’s offensive in southern Lebanon: 2,900 dead, 36,000 homes destroyed and 1.4 million displaced

Southern Lebanon — which was turned into a battleground between Israel and the pro‑Iranian militia Hezbollah in 2023 — has suffered a new wave of devastation since February 28, when the Israeli and U.S. governments declared war on Iran and Hezbollah once again took up arms in solidarity with its ally. Israel then shifted its focus from Iran to striking Lebanon, intensifying both its military offensive and its occupation of the neighboring country.

Over the past three months — even with a supposed ceasefire in place, which was extended again this week — Israel’s campaign has killed 2,914 people in the south (83% of the 3,516 fatalities recorded nationwide), destroyed 36,000 homes (72% of the total), and forced the evacuation of 300 municipalities, spreading panic and isolating communities, and driving into exile people who once insisted they would never leave.

The unpredictability of the attacks — which Israel launches against residential blocks and roads without making the slightest attempt to justify them to its international allies — hits medical teams daily and has brought almost all commercial activity in the country’s south to a halt.

All this has forced 1.4 million Lebanese people from their homes. The figure, provided last Wednesday to EL PAÍS by Lebanon’s Ministry of Health, represents a quarter of the national population (around 5.5 million) and matches the number of displaced people recorded in the autumn of 2024, the worst period until now.

The campaign Israel launched against Hezbollah in March — presented by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as the decisive one — has involved the forcible occupation of a border strip inside Lebanese territory that the Israeli army describes as a “security zone,” covering some 230 square miles (almost twice the size of the Gaza Strip). That invasion, which now spans 6% of Lebanon’s territory, has placed 68 villages under occupation, according to Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who on Sunday accused Israel of pursuing a policy of “total devastation.”

Before the ceasefire declared in April — which was never observed by Israel — the Netanyahu government had ordered the evacuation of all territory up to the Litani River, around 19 miles north of the border. The measure was announced by Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, who said it would affect some 600,000 people and specified that Shiite Muslims — the majority in the area and followers of the same confession as Hezbollah — would not be allowed to return until Israel deemed its security guaranteed.

That announcement pushed many families from the border villages to seek refuge just north of the river. Although the ceasefire nullified the order and technically allowed them to return, most chose not to, as Israel continued bombing in practice.

Last Wednesday, despite ongoing talks with the Lebanese government aimed at shoring up the ceasefire, the Israeli army reimposed the expulsion order on southern Lebanon. This time, it extended it up to the Zahrani River, six miles beyond the Litani, warning that it would employ “extreme force” in the area.

“That territory between the Litani and the Zahrani was hosting many people who had previously been displaced from further south,” says a humanitarian worker who speaks on condition of anonymity because she is not authorized to talk to the press. “The situation there was insecure, but there were also thousands of residents who remained in their homes,” she adds.

Now, the displaced are being forced to move even farther north, where public shelters are overwhelmed. Many are sleeping in their vehicles or outdoors; others remain in areas frequently bombed by Israel because they cannot afford to pay rent.

Fourteen percent of the country declared off-limits

The area south of the Zahrani River that Israel now designates as prohibited for civilians — nearly 800 square miles, or 14% of Lebanon — includes major cities such as Tyre (the country’s fourth-largest, with 200,000 residents) and Nabatieh (around 50,000 inhabitants, now almost deserted). Proportionally, it would be similar to ordering the evacuation of all of Castilla–La Mancha in Spain.

The fireballs from Israeli strikes erupting these days among Tyre’s buildings, and the steady toll of civilian deaths — including two students killed by a missile alongside their father on Monday as they drove home from their final exams — are driving people out of the country’s south, where 80% of the population was already living below the poverty line at the start of the conflict in 2023, according to Oxfam.

People are fleeing an offensive they fear they cannot escape: between midnight Monday and 4 p.m. Tuesday, U.N. peacekeepers recorded 478 exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah. Of these, 468 were carried out by Israel (97%). The vast majority occurred south of the Zahrani River, an area three times the size of the city of Madrid.

Although Israel argues that these strikes are strictly targeting Hezbollah, the daily barrage of missiles is causing widespread destruction, adding to the damage inflicted between October 2023 and November 2024, which the World Bank estimated would cost $3.4 billion to repair.

Today, 80% of markets and shops in that southern Lebanese territory are out of service, according to the U.N. World Food Programme, either because roads run through conflict zones or because transport workers have been displaced.

The Lebanese Ministry of Health, which accuses Israel of applying “the law of the jungle” in its attacks on the medical network, reports “serious damage” to at least five hospitals in the south. “These are direct attacks,” Dr. Joseph el Helou, adviser to Minister Rakkan Nassereddine, told this newspaper. A hospital in Mais al‑Jabal and two others in Bint Jbeil — both border areas — were forced to shut down before falling under Israeli occupation.

Working in the health system has become a high‑risk activity in the region, where Israel fires on ambulances it accuses — without evidence — of transporting fighters. On Wednesday, separate attacks on medical vehicles killed two paramedics in Chehour and another in Zabdine, as well as the two wounded people they were transporting, according to rescue teams.

The World Health Organization, which condemned Israeli strikes this week near the two largest hospitals in Tyre, has recorded 191 attacks on health infrastructure since March.

Israel’s escalation is placing growing pressure on water networks. The Taybeh treatment plant has been forced to shut down again, after already being hit in 2024, when another strike cut off water to 72,000 residents of Tyre. Six months after the 2024 ceasefire, 150,000 people in the south still lacked running water, according to research by Oxfam and Action Against Hunger.

All this makes it harder to maintain agricultural land. Israeli attacks have also burned more than 1,900 hectares of territory since March, according to Lebanon’s National Council for Scientific Research, a government‑linked body.

According to that institution, many Lebanese would have no home to return to in the south even if the war ended tomorrow. Some 36,000 homes — the bulk of the 50,424 houses the government says Israel has destroyed totally or partially since March (and more than 240,000 since 2023) — are located in the south, the same area where Israeli minister Katz warned that Shiites would not be allowed to return until Israel deemed it appropriate.

The areas registering “maximum” devastation, according to its data, are Naqoura, the border territory where U.N. peacekeepers are based; Marjayoun, east of the frontier; Nabatieh, where Israeli troops are now only a few miles away; and Bint Jbeil.

“My town looks like Hiroshima now,” says a Bint Jbeil resident displaced to Beirut, showing this newspaper images of his village before the war.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition