Heavy fighting reportedly erupted in the area of Deir Seryan, on the border between Israel and Lebanon and well inside the Israeli occupied “Yellow Line” area of southern Lebanon. Israel reportedly advanced troops into the town and Hezbollah attacked them.
Details are still emerging about the exchange of fire, but the IDF reported two Israeli soldiers were “moderately wounded” in the incident, and were taken to a hospital. A Hezbollah video also showed a drone attacking and damaging an Israeli tank, though it’s unclear if that video was from today or a previous incident.
Israel responded with new evacuation orders covering a number of Lebanese towns, ordering their populations to flee at least 1 kilometer away and into “open areas” for their own safety. Two distinct sets of evacuation orders were issued, one notably including the Christian village of Debel.
IDF military vehicles seen smashing solar panels in Debel, Lebanon | Image from X
Debel has twice come into media attention because Israeli forces within the town have been seen destroying plainly civilian infrastructure like solar panels and earlier in the conflict an image was released of an Israeli soldier smashing a statue of Jesus with a sledgehammer.
While Israel has repeatedly presented itself as only fighting Hezbollah and in no way attacking broader civilian infrastructure within Lebanon, the repeated targeting of Debel, which seemingly had no connection to Hezbollah even notionally, strongly suggests the opposite.
Indeed, last week commanders told the Israeli media outlet Haaretz that their mission was effectively to destroy Shi’ite villages to displace the Shi’ite population from southern Lebanon. Even this seems to narrow the scope of the destruction too much, however, as Debel shows that Lebanese Christians are hardly immune to such destruction.
