Israel demolishes homes in southern Lebanon’s border villages

Israeli military bulldozers plowed through neighborhoods in the villages of Kfar Kila and Ramyah on Sunday,  local officials from the areas told Mada Masr. 

The demolitions furthered the destruction of residential and agricultural areas in the border region which has comprised part of Israel’s operations in Lebanon.

Israel also conducted overnight airstrikes on Beirut, targeting sites near a major mosque and a hospital in the Burj al-Barajneh camp. 

Hezbollah launched around 100 rockets at Israel on Sunday, some of which caused fires, with the Israeli military claiming to have intercepted most of the missiles. 

At Kfar Kila, Israeli forces blew up and bulldozed a large number of homes after entering the village following days of airstrikes and artillery shelling, said Khalil Sarhan, head of the Kfar Kila agricultural development association, speaking to Mada Masr.

Kafr Kila lies on the Lebanese side of the Blue Line established between Israel and Lebanon in 2000. The Metula settlement, which is being used by the Israeli military, lies on the Israeli side of the line.

Sarhan added that Occupation forces did not only demolish homes but also used bulldozers to flatten the rubble, erasing all traces of the area. Similar destruction was also seen in the village of Ramyah, village head Ali Atwi told Mada Masr.

This came just hours after similar deliberate destruction by the Israeli military on Saturday evening in the Tarsh neighborhood of Mays al-Jabal, further east on the southern border of Lebanon. There, Israeli forces rigged homes and civilian properties with highly explosive substances, according to village head Abdel Moneim al-Shoqeir, who told Mada Masr that a secondary school was among the buildings destroyed.

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported on Sunday that Israeli forces also bulldozed the cemetery of the Blida village, also in the Nabatieh Governorate.

The expanded operations to demolish residential areas in border villages come after the United States State Department equivocated when asked to comment on Israel’s demolition of Mhaibib village on Wednesday, claiming that Hezbollah had infrastructure beneath and inside civilian homes. US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller stated in a press briefing on Thursday that this gave Israel the right to strike these "legitimate targets."

The destruction of Lebanese border towns and roads has hampered logistical flow to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which reported on Saturday that water and food supplies had been cut off from their post in Mays al-Jabal since September 29, due to difficulty accessing positions along the Blue Line. 

Further north in Lebanon, the Israeli Air Force struck an Islamic Health Organization center in Deir al-Zahrani, a village between the cities of Nabatieh and Saida. The strike killed a paramedic and caused a pedestrian bridge in the area to collapse, a source in the organization told Mada Masr.

Israeli shelling of residential neighborhoods in Lebanese cities persisted on Sunday, killing five Lebanese civilians in the Sur Governorate.

Residents displaced to temporary housing further north up the coastline in Saida and Barja received phone calls on Sunday from individuals who claimed to be Israeli military officers and who ordered them to leave their current displacement locations, a Lebanese security source told Mada Masr. The source said that the displaced residents who received the calls were all originally residents of the border villages of Maroun al-Ras and Yaroun.

In Beirut, the Israeli Air Force launched overnight strikes on several targets in Haret Hreik, claiming to have hit Hezbollah's intelligence headquarters and an underground weapons manufacturing workshop. The Occupation had issued an evacuation warning prior to targeting the building, which lies within a 500 meter radius of the Bahman Hospital and the Hussaini Mosque.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military reported on Saturday that 11 of its soldiers were injured, including three in critical condition, after an Israeli tank mistakenly shelled the building where they were stationed on Thursday.