BY EMMANUEL OGBONNA
Israel’s air force carried out a series of strikes across southern and eastern Lebanon late Monday and into the early hours of Tuesday, hitting multiple locations including Sidon, the country’s third-largest city, in an escalation that comes as Lebanese authorities prepare to review efforts to dismantle Hezbollah’s armed presence.
One of the most powerful strikes occurred around 1 a.m. Tuesday in Sidon, where a three-story commercial building in a coastal district was completely destroyed. The area is known for workshops and mechanic shops rather than residential housing, and witnesses said the building was uninhabited at the time of the attack. Emergency crews rushed to the scene, transporting at least one person by ambulance while continuing to search through the rubble. No fatalities were immediately reported.
The strike in Sidon came just days before Lebanon’s army commander is scheduled to brief the government on the military’s mission to disarm Hezbollah in areas along the border with Israel, a sensitive process tied to commitments made under a ceasefire agreement reached more than a year ago.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun strongly condemned the Israeli attacks in a statement released Tuesday, saying they undermined international efforts to reduce tensions and conflicted with Lebanon’s own attempts to extend state authority into regions long dominated by armed groups. He emphasized that the strikes complicated the government’s push to restore control and security in the south and to move forward with disarmament plans.
Israel’s military said the strikes targeted weapons storage sites and infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah and Hamas. Israeli officials acknowledged that some of the targets were located in civilian areas but accused the militant groups of deliberately embedding military assets among non-military structures.
The latest attacks are part of near-daily Israeli military operations since a ceasefire ended the most recent round of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. That truce included a Lebanese pledge to disarm militant groups, a commitment Israel says has not been fully carried out.
The strikes followed public warnings issued nearly two hours earlier by Israel’s Arabic-language military spokesman, Avichay Adraee, who posted on social media that the army would target specific villages in the eastern Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon. Lebanese media reported that residents evacuated the warned areas ahead of the strikes, and no casualties were reported there.
In the Bekaa Valley village of Manara, a home that was hit was said to belong to Sharhabil al-Sayed, identified as a Hamas military commander who was killed in an Israeli drone strike in May 2024. Elsewhere on Monday, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said a drone strike on a car in the southern village of Braikeh wounded two people. Israel said that attack targeted two Hezbollah members.
The Lebanese army has already begun disarming Palestinian factions operating in the country, and the government has pledged that by the end of 2025, areas south of the Litani River—considered a key buffer zone near the Israeli border—will be cleared of Hezbollah’s armed presence. The issue of Hezbollah’s disarmament is expected to dominate a cabinet meeting scheduled for Thursday, which will be attended by army commander Gen. Rudolph Haikal.
Notably, several of Monday’s airstrikes hit villages north of the Litani River and well away from the Israeli border, underscoring the broader geographic scope of Israel’s campaign.
The current tensions trace back to a 14-month conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that followed the outbreak of war in Gaza. Hostilities along the Lebanon-Israel border began on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after Hamas attacked southern Israel, when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in what it described as solidarity with Hamas. Israel responded with months of airstrikes that intensified dramatically in September 2024, weakening Hezbollah’s military capabilities and leadership before a brief ground invasion.
That war ended in November 2024 with a ceasefire brokered by the United States. Despite the agreement, Israel has continued to conduct frequent airstrikes in Lebanon, saying they are necessary to prevent Hezbollah from rearming. Human rights officials say the ongoing attacks have taken a significant toll on civilians, with more than 120 non-combatants reported killed since the ceasefire, highlighting the fragile and volatile nature of the truce.
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