Yesterday, the US hosted a ceasefire monitoring committee meeting in the southern Lebanese coastal town of Naqoura. It was seen as historic because both Lebanese and Israeli officials attended, the first direct talks between the two nations in over 40 years.
Hopes this might cool tensions, however, didn’t last particularly long, as the next morning, Israel was carrying out airstrikes against multiple towns in southern Lebanon, and issued an evacuation order for the civilian populations in those towns.
Targeted were the towns of Jbaa, Mahrouna, Mjadel, and Baraachit, because the IDF claimed those four towns had major Hezbollah weapons depots, and those depots just happened to be in the most densely populated parts of the residential districts.
A major building in Jbaa was the first to be destroyed, and the strike badly damaged a number of buildings in the surrounding areas. The maps the IDF presented showed numerous buildings in Mjadel and Baraachit that they intend to destroy as well, but as usual no evidence was presented showing they were actually legitimate targets.
Another strike was reported in Mahrouna, though it’s not clear what the target was. Locals said a lot of the buildings destroyed in the various towns were plainly just civilian in nature and neither weapons depots not other “infrastructure” for Hezbollah in any way.
The IDF statement accused Hezbollah of violating the ceasefire with the existence of those buildings, and of using the locals as human shields. Again, though, evidence of those buildings having anything to do with Hezbollah was not released.
