Many of these towns were inhabited for at least two centuries before they are now empty due to Israeli bombing.
The photos reviewed include towns between Kafr Kila in the southeast Lebanon South beyond the village of Mays al-Jabal, then west beyond a base used by a force United Nations Temporary forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and arriving at the small village of Labouneh.
Abdel Moneim Shuqair, head of the municipality of Mays al-Jabal, which was subjected to Israeli attacks, said: “There are beautiful old houses that are hundreds of years old. Thousands of artillery shells and hundreds of air strikes bombed the town.”
He added: “Who knows what will be left standing in the end?”
Reuters compared photos Moons Synthetic those taken in October 2023 and those taken in September and October 2024. Many of the villages that sustained visible damage over the past month are located on hilltops overlooking Israel.
Israel intensified raids on southern Lebanon and other areas last month after nearly a year of cross-border firefights. Israeli forces penetrated by land into the mountainous areas on the border with Lebanon and clashed with Hezbollah fighters in some towns.
Lebanon’s Disaster Risk Management Unit, which tracks the number of deaths, injuries, and attacks on specific towns, said that the 14 towns whose photos were reviewed by Reuters, were subjected to a total of 3,809 Israeli attacks during the past year.
The Israeli army has not yet responded to questions from Reuters about the extent of the destruction. The Israeli military spokesman said Daniel Hagari On October 24th Israel It bombed more than 3,200 targets in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli army stated that it was attacking towns in southern Lebanon because Hezbollah had turned “civilian villages into fortified combat zones” in which it was hiding weapons, explosives, and vehicles. Hezbollah denies using civilian infrastructure to launch attacks or store weapons, and residents of those towns also deny this allegation.
A source familiar with Israeli military operations in Lebanon told Reuters that the forces are systematically attacking towns with strategic observation points, such as Muhaibib.
The source stated that Israel “learned lessons” after its last war with Hezbollah in 2006, including the attack by Hezbollah fighters from hilltops on the forces that penetrated by land into the valleys of southern Lebanon.
“That’s why they are targeting these villages so hard, so they can move more freely,” he added.
The latest photos of the village of Kafr Kila showed a series of white spots on a main road leading to the town.
Pictures taken last year revealed the same road surrounded by homes and green plants, indicating that the homes had been destroyed.
An entire block near the center of the village of Mays al-Jabal, 700 meters from the Blue Line drawn by the United Nations that separates Israel and Lebanon, was subjected to major destruction.
The area, measuring about 150 meters by 400 meters in width and length, appeared to be a patch of brown sand, indicating that the buildings there had been completely flattened. Pictures taken in the same month of 2023 showed a neighborhood crowded with homes.
“No sign of life”
The Lebanese government says at least 1.2 million people have been displaced by Israeli attacks, and more than 2,600 have been killed over the past year, most of whom died in the past month.
Residents of border villages have not been able to reach their towns for months. Abdel Moneim Choucair, mayor of Mays al-Jabal, said, “After the war reached Mays al-Jabal, and all its residents left, we stopped knowing anything about the situation in the country.”
Pictures of the nearby village of Muhaibib showed similar levels of destruction. Muhaybib was among several villages, along with Kafr Kila, Aitaroun, and Adasawaramiya, in which a video clip shared on social media showed simultaneous explosions of several buildings at the same time, indicating that they were rigged with explosives.
An Israeli army spokesman said on October 24 that one of the command centers of Hezbollah’s Special Radwan Force is located under Muhaibib, and that Israeli forces had “neutralized the main tunnel network” used by the group, but he did not go into details.
Hagari said that Israel’s goal is to “expel Hezbollah from the border, dismantle its capabilities, and eliminate the threat to the residents of the north.”
“This is a plan they took off the shelves,” said John Alterman, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He added, “The armies are making plans… and they are implementing them (now).”
Seth Jones, another vice president at the center, told Reuters that Hezbollah used villages on the front line to launch its short-range missiles at Israel.
Lebanon Baalbaki, conductor of the Lebanese National Symphony Orchestra and son of the late Lebanese artist Abdel Hamid Baalbaki, said that his family is buying satellite photos of their hometown of Adaissa to verify whether the family home is still standing.
Abdul Hamid turned the house into a cultural center decorated with his original artwork and drawings and more than a thousand books in a library made of wood only. Abdul Hamid passed away in 2013 and was buried under the house with his late wife.
Lebanon told Reuters, “We are a family of artists. My father is well-known and our house is known to be a cultural house. We were reassuring ourselves with this idea.”
As of late October, the house was standing. But over the weekend, Lebanon saw a video circulating of several houses exploding in Adaissa, including his family’s home.
The family does not belong to Hezbollah, and Lebanon denied the existence of any weapons or military equipment stored there.
