Public high school in Marwahine, south Lebanon, destroyed with explosives by Israeli army

BEIRUT — The Israeli army detonated a building Thursday morning belonging to the official high school in the border town of Marwahine in the Sour district, an act condemned by Education Minister Rima Karameh, at a time when the Israeli state is reportedly seeking to demolish border villages to establish a “security zone” in southern Lebanon.

A video circulating on social media shows the building being blown up. The structure, made up of three separate wings across several floors, had already been heavily damaged during clashes and the 2024 ground invasion.

Satellite images from 2024 show the roof of the main building already severely damaged.

Since the November 2024 cease-fire, the Israeli army has maintained a position on “Jabal Blat,” a hill a few kilometers from Marwahine, which lies about two kilometers in a straight line from the nearest point of the Blue Line separating Lebanon and Israel.

The Israeli army said, for its part, that it had discovered “more than 130 weapons belonging to Hezbollah” inside an unidentified “school facility.”

In a post on X, Arabic-language army spokesperson Ella Waweya shared photos of soldiers, reportedly from the Givati Brigade, inside a building where rifles, handguns, and ammunition are displayed. It was not immediately possible to verify where the photos were taken, and the Israeli army did not release any images of the building’s exterior.

Reacting to the destruction of the school, Minister Karameh condemned 'the atrocities committed by the Israeli aggression against civilians, educational infrastructure, homes and towns in Lebanon, which continue to worsen.' She stressed that the official high school in Marwahine was “devoid of any military or even civilian presence.”

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The education minister also issued an appeal “to the world’s conscience, to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, to all U.N. agencies and to major influential powers” to protect civilians, educational institutions, and students, “who have paid a heavy price, with dozens killed and injured.”

Karameh also urged international bodies “to prevent further targeting of schools in Lebanon” and “to provide exceptional support to the education sector to ensure its continuity,” noting that most public schools are now being used as shelters.

Since Hezbollah’s entry into the war on March 2, in response to U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, the Israeli army has carried out sustained bombardment of southern Lebanon, with ground advances into Lebanese territory aimed, among other objectives, at creating “a buffer zone and isolating the south from the rest of the country.”

The conflict in Lebanon has already killed more than 2,167 people and injured more than 7,000. It has also displaced more than one million people.