Since invading southern Lebanon in early March, Israel has sustained relatively few casualties, compared to the thousands of slain Lebanese. This weekend was an outlier, however, with two different incidents of IDF casualties reported.
The largest incident was on Saturday, when a pair of Israeli military vehicles collided near Rab al-Thalathine, a rural village in Marjayoun District. Six IDF soldiers were reported hospitalized after the incident, though no fatalties were reported.
The other incident, reported late on Friday, saw two Israeli soldiers severely wounded and an IDF officer moderately wounded in what is being described as an “operational accident” when a grenade exploded. Where exactly this happened is unclear, with Israeli media accountings only saying it was in “southern Lebanon.”
An Israeli flag hangs from a building in Lebanon as seen from the Israeli side of the Israel-Lebanon border, in northern Israel, July 5, 2026 REUTERS
This was followed Saturday and Sunday by Israel noticeably scaling up the amount of strikes against southern Lebanon, something of an escalation against the locals even though all the IDF casualties sustained appear to have been self-inflicted through accidents.
Airstrikes were reported along with artillery strikes. The artillery strikes appear to have been heavier against the area in and around Ali al-Taher Ridge, with Mayfadoun and Zawtar al-Sharqiyah reporting coming under “heavy and concentrated fire.”
Demolitions also continued apace across southern Lebanon. A private school in Houla, just south of Rab al-Thalathine in the Marjayoun District, had explosives planted in it and was totally leveled. Other large detonations were reported in Tallouseh, also in the Marjayoun District, and nearby Aitaroun, in Bint Jbeil District.
The demolitions and heavy shelling are part of a campaign of destruction targeting southern municipalities and indeed southern infrastructure in general. Early this summer, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that some of Lebanon’s villages simply needed to “disappear.” In some places in the south where the concentration of Israeli force has been the heaviest, already very little remains of the villages, but the continued demolitions suggest the process, ominously, isn’t over.
