A photo taken from the coastal city of Sour in southern Lebanon shows clouds of smoke rising from an Israeli air strike that targeted the Naqoura region on Nov. 26, 2024. (Credit: Kawnat Haju)
BEIRUT — The Israeli army rigged several homes in Kfar Kila and detonated them on Thursday morning, three weeks into a cease-fire that is meant to bring an end to fighting between Hezbollah and Israel and see the Israeli army withdraw from southern Lebanon altogether.
The explosions in the southern Lebanese village in the eastern sector of the border strip between Lebanon and Israel could be heard in the Nabatieh and Marjayoun areas. Further west, Israeli bulldozers destroyed and razed houses inside Naqoura for the third day running.
Since the cease-fire came into effect on Nov. 27, the Israeli army has been destroying homes in southern Lebanon on a nearly daily basis, a continuation of its actions in the South since it first launched its ground offensive into Lebanon in late October.
Tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed by the Israeli army. After only a month into its aerial onslaught, nearly a quarter of all buildings in 25 Lebanese border villages were damaged or destroyed, according to the Washington Post. On Nov. 5, with still three weeks of Israeli bombardments ahead, the state-run National News Agency reported that at least 40,000 homes had been razed to the ground across 37 border villages. Days before the truce, Le Monde found that Kfar Kila and Aita al-Shaab were two-thirds demolished and a dozen other towns were 40-50 percent destroyed.
The cease-fire agreement supposedly put an end to more than 13 months of fighting and two months of escalation across Lebanon. It provides for the implementation of Resolution 1701, the cessation of offensives by Hezbollah and other armed groups against Israel, the cessation of Israeli military actions in Lebanon, the dismantling of illegal arms production infrastructures, the confiscation of unauthorized weapons, the deployment of Lebanese Army along the southern border, the gradual withdrawal of Israel from southern Lebanon within 60 days, and the withdrawal of Hezbollah north of the Litani River, roughly 20 kilometers from the border.
