The Israeli military has reported carrying out at least 8 strikes against eastern Lebanon today, centering on the area around Baalbek. Multiple buildings were hit in the area, according to reports, but casualties from the strikes, if any, have yet to be confirmed.
The IDF claimed the sites belonged to Hezbollah’s “elite Radwan Force” and had been used to store weapons, as well as for training, though they did not offer evidence that this was the case. They did, however, claim that the presence of the buildings violated the “ceasefire understandings” and that the buildings posed a threat to Israel.
The actual language of the ceasefire does not appear to forbid the presence of such buildings this far north, as the terms only strictly meant to remove Hezbollah from the area south of the Litani River. IDF statements, however, often treat the very existence of Hezbollah as a de facto violation of understandings.
Launching airstrikes against Lebanese territory, by contrast, definitionally violates the very nature of a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. Israel, however, has launched well over 1000 strikes on Lebanon since the ceasefire went into effect, killing hundreds of people.
Israel has been escalating the strikes on Lebanon in recent weeks, nominally in anticipation of the US and Iran going to war. Though Israel has warned Lebanon they’ll target civilian sites if Hezbollah participates in the war, they regularly attack civilian targets in Lebanon at any rate.
Hezbollah has not fired a single rocket at Israel since the ceasefire went into effect in November of 2024, and Hezbollah officials have said they don’t intend to intervene in the event of a limited US-Iran War.
The Lebanese Army continues to reinforce its own sites in the south around Sardah and Nabatieh. Israel fired shots at the Lebanese base in Sardah over the weekend, claiming them to be “warning shots” meant to stop the Lebanese Army’s construction of defensive structures in Lebanon’s south. Today, a drone strike was reported near Nabatieh, which appears to have been meant as a “warning,” though it likewise caused no casualties to did not stop the Lebanese Army’s construction.
