Scores of people, including a number of women and children, have been killed over the course of the weekend in southern Lebanon, as Israeli strikes continue to escalate across the region, and numbers from the Lebanese Health Ministry show the overall death toll of the war continuing to spiral, despite reports continuing to present the active ceasefire in Lebanon as “holding.”
The Health Ministry’s most recent numbers, released on Sunday, had at least 2,679 people killed and 8,229 wounded so far since the Israeli invasion in early March. Those numbers continue to consistently rise despite a ceasefire nominally being in place for weeks now.
The Health Ministry’s number included 20 killed on Sunday alone in multiple different strikes, and 46 others wounded. The wounded included at least four paramedics, who were wounded in an Israeli strike near a medical center in the Tyre District.
Smoke rises from a village in southern Lebanon as the Israeli army operates in it as seen from the Israeli side of the border, April 23, 2026 REUTERS/Gil Eliyahu
Another number is growing, and that’s the number of Lebanese displaced by this war, as the IDF issued new evacuation orders for 10 additional towns in Nabatieh District, including several that are north of the Litani River, which was previously presented as the boundary of Israel’s focus.
Lebanese officials now put the number of displaced at 1.6 million, which is over 25% of the entire population of Lebanon. Since this also include virtually the entire south, which is where much of the agriculture takes place, Lebanon is expected to have a growing food shortage problem and will be reliant of international aid.
Early in the ceasefire, Israel established a new “Yellow Line,” which demarcated their newly occupied portion of Lebanon from the rest of the country. IDF chief Eyal Zamir was quoted recently as saying that the military will, however, continue to operate north of the Yellow Line as well as north of the Litani River.
