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Despite Ceasefire With Iran, Israel Pummels Lebanon With ‘Apocalyptic’ Strikes
Mediators said Lebanon was included in the ceasefire agreement between the US and Iran. Netanyahu said it “does not include Lebanon" and launched the largest attack of the war so far.
Apr 08, 2026
Israel made it abundantly clear on Wednesday that it does not consider Lebanon to be protected by Tuesday night’s ceasefire that halted hostilities for two weeks between the US and Iran.
Hours after the ceasefire was reached, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that it had begun "the largest coordinated strike across Lebanon," since it began its assault on the country in early March, with bombardments on what it said were Hezbollah targets across Beirut, Bekaa, and southern Lebanon.
According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, at least 87 people have been killed and more than 700 wounded across the country.
Hezbollah reportedly held its fire against Israel after Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who mediated the agreement, said on Tuesday that "Iran and the United States of America, along with their allies, have agreed to an immediate ceasefire everywhere, including Lebanon and elsewhere, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY."
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Wednesday that, at least in Israel's eyes, the two-week agreement “does not include Lebanon." Israel said much of what was hit was located “within the heart of the civilian population."
Images and videos posted to social media show scenes that one resident described as "apocalyptic." Many of the attacks reportedly came without warning.
"Families were caught completely by surprise, with no time to escape," the resident said.
According to The Guardian:
Warplanes leveled several buildings in the center of the capital city without warning, filling the skies with smoke and the sounds of sirens as ambulances headed to impact sites.
The streets of Beirut were filled with cars crumpled by the blasts and the flaming wreckage of buildings that first responders struggled to extinguish.
People rushed home to check on their families; a man filmed as he ran towards a struck building in the Chiyah neighbourhood, screaming: “There are people inside!”
Pictures of rubble-covered children circulated on social media as people tried to find their parents.
Israel said it attacked more than 100 targets in less than 10 minutes.
Many more people remain trapped beneath the rubble, according to Haaretz, and full casualty counts have not yet been conducted. Meanwhile, hospitals across Beirut are overflowing with injured people, and first responders have issued urgent appeals for blood donations.
"The wounded and casualties are numerous," said Lebanese Red Cross head Georges Kettaneh, according to the Lebanese news network LBCI. "We are doing everything we can to save them.”
Israel launched another wave of attacks across other parts Lebanon, including a strike on an ambulance in Tyre that killed at least four people, according to local sources.
A bombing in the port city of Sidon left eight people dead and 22 injured. Video from local media outlets shows a local cafe lying in ruins as residents run in fear and paramedics rush to transport the wounded.
Other footage posted by local media showed a gigantic plume of smoke rising above a village in Shamstar, where mourners were reportedly attacked during a funeral procession.
Lebanon's prime minister, Nawaf Salam, said on social media: "Whilst we welcomed the agreement between Iran and the United States, and stepped up our efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement in Lebanon, Israel continues to escalate its attacks, which have targeted densely populated residential neighborhoods and claimed the lives of unarmed civilians across Lebanon."
He added that Israel was "showing no regard for regional and international efforts to end the war, let alone the principles of international law and international humanitarian law, which it has never respected in the first place."
IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said Israel planned to continue the attacks "without stopping."
The attacks are already threatening to torpedo the ceasefire between the US and Iran in its infancy. Hezbollah legislator Ibrahim Al-Moussawi has warned of a response from Iran if Israel continues to attack Lebanon.
“The agreement includes Lebanon, according to its terms, and Iran insisted on this inclusion,” Al-Moussawi told local television channel Al-Jadeed.
According to Iran's Fars News Agency, it has once again halted traffic in the Strait of Hormuz in response to Israel's attack, putting in jeopardy a core piece of the agreement—that the waterway would be reopened.
Already, Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,500 people in Lebanon since the beginning of March, including at least 130 children. Israeli evacuation orders have forced more than 1.2 million people—one in five—to flee their homes, and the military has pressured Christian and Druse communities and southern Lebanon to force out Shia Muslims in neighboring communities, which has been described by observers as a push for ethnic cleansing.
Israel routinely violated its previous ceasefire with Lebanon that began in November 2024 with more than 10,000 air and land attacks over the first year, which the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said demonstrated a “total disregard of the ceasefire agreement.” It has done the same in Gaza, where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed since a ceasefire began in October 2025.
The Beirut-based journalist Séamus Malekafzali warned that by launching the "largest attacks... of this war so far" immediately after the US and Iran reached a tentative agreement, Israel was attempting to create conditions that make a durable ceasefire impossible.
He said, "Israel is attempting to create facts on the ground regarding this ceasefire and the supposed stopping of the war on all fronts, not just Iran."
UPDATE: This article has been edited following publication to contain more updated casualty numbers from the Lebanese Ministry of Health.
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‘What This Describes Is Ethnic Cleansing’: Israeli Plan for Southern Lebanon Sparks Horror
"Israel will keep doing it as long as the world keeps looking away with their eyes while reaching out their hands to help fund it," wrote one critic.
Apr 01, 2026
Critics accused Israel of plotting a mass ethnic cleansing campaign in southern Lebanon after a Wednesday report in The New York Times outlined a push by Israeli officials to expel Shiite Muslims from the area.
According to the Times, Israeli military officials have been privately pressing Christian and Druse communities in southern Lebanon to "force out any Lebanese from neighboring Shiite Muslim communities who have sought refuge among them as Israeli bombardments flatten Shiite towns."
Local Christian and Druse leaders told the Times that they believed Israel was sending a "clear signal" that their goal is to drive out all Shiites, who make up the majority of people of southern Lebanon. Hezbollah is a Shiite militia group that has regularly fired rockets into Israel.
Ali Naser, a 26-year-old Shiite who lives near the Israel-Lebanon border, told the Times that he and his family had initially found shelter from Israeli bombing in the Christian town of Rmeish. However, he said that local leaders told him that they've come under great pressure from Israel to not give Shiites refuge.
"Israel wants to create a new buffer zone, it wants us out, what can we do?" asked Naser.
Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic, posted an excerpt of the Times' report on Israel's plans in Southern Lebanon and commented, "So what this describes is ethnic cleansing."
Ashton Pittman, news editor at the Mississippi Free Press, shared Serwer's opinion that Israel's actions are "100% ethnic cleansing," and chided the international community for once again sitting on its hands while Israel carries out illegal forced displacement of Shiite Muslims.
"Israel will keep doing it," he wrote, "as long as the world keeps looking away with their eyes while reaching out their hands to help fund it."
George Washington University political scientist Marc Lynch also argued that the world should doing more to stop Israel's invasion of Lebanon.
"Israel’s open ethnic cleansing of south Lebanon and declared intent to occupy its neighbor’s territory should be the subject of intense international outrage, pressure, and mobilization," wrote Lynch.
The human rights organization DAWN on Wednesday cited recent remarks from Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz about Israel's plans to level Lebanese villages adjacent to Israel's border, while also refusing to allow Lebanese citizens who evacuated the area to return.
Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, director for Israel-Palestine at DAWN, accused Israel of "accelerating its agenda to take over more land, this time in Lebanon."
"[Israel's] track record in Palestine and across the region makes clear it won't stop without concrete consequences," said Omer-Man, "and states should act before it's too late."
United Nations emergency relief coordinator Tom Fletcher warned on Tuesday that "a cycle of coercive displacement is unfolding" in Lebanon, where Israel's military invasion has so far displaced more than 1.1 million people.
Fletcher also said that the conflict in southern Lebanon was causing "anxiety and tensions at levels I have not witnessed in many years" in the region.
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Israel Admits It ‘Photoshopped’ Image to Portray Assassinated Lebanese Journalist as Hezbollah Operative
The Committee to Protect Journalists regional director called the killing part of “a disturbing pattern” of “Israel accusing journalists of being active combatants and terrorists without providing credible evidence.”
Mar 30, 2026
An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson has admitted that the military posted a "photoshopped" image of a Lebanese journalist killed in an airstrike in order to portray him as a Hezbollah operative.
On Saturday, three journalists—Ali Shuaib, a veteran correspondent for Al-Manar TV; Fatima Ftouni of the Al Mayadeen channel; and her brother, cameraman Mohammad Ftouni—were killed when four precision missiles hit their car on the Jezzine Road in Southern Lebanon. Several other reporters were injured in the attack.
According to Al Jazeera, the vehicle was clearly marked "press."
In the following hours, the IDF's official social media account posted that it had "ELIMINATED" Shuaib in the attack.
"For years, Ali Hassan Shuaib operated as a Hezbollah Radwan Force terrorist under the guise of a journalist," the post read. "Turns out the 'press vest' was just a cover for terror."
The post, which has more than 2.1 million views on X as of Monday, featured a split image showing Shuaib in a press outfit on one side and in a Hezbollah military uniform on the other.
But according to Fox News' chief foreign correspondent, Trey Yingst, the network later asked the IDF about the photo's source. They were told: "Unfortunately, there isn't really a picture of it. It was photoshopped."
On Monday, Israel issued another statement claiming that Mohammad Ftouni was "an additional terrorist in Hezbollah's military wing, who also operated under the guise of a journalist."
But when asked for evidence to confirm this by the Agence France-Presse, it provided none, with a spokesperson saying, "What we have is what we can state."
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) regional director Sara Qudah called the killings part of "a disturbing pattern in this war and in the decades prior [of] Israel accusing journalists of being active combatants and terrorists without providing credible evidence."
Israel accused Shuaib of "consistently working to expose the locations of IDF troops operating in southern Lebanon and along the border, and maintain[ing] continuous contact with other terrorists in the Radwan Force unit in particular, and within the terror organization in general.”
American journalist Ryan Grim, the co-founder of Drop Site News, said: "The Israeli statement itself says that his 'crime' was reporting on troop locations and communicating with sources in Hezbollah. That is called war reporting."
According to a report last month by CPJ, a record 129 journalists were killed in 2025, and Israel was responsible for two-thirds of the worldwide total.
The vast majority of those killed have been Palestinian journalists in Gaza—at least 261 of whom have been killed since October 7, 2023—according to a running tally by the International Federation of Journalists. At least 11 journalists have also been killed in Lebanon since 2023.
In addition to Shuaib and the Ftounis, two others have been killed since Israel's latest onslaught in Lebanon after Hezbollah retaliated against US-Israeli attacks on Iran. Israeli attacks have also resulted in the deaths of photojournalist Hussain Hamood and journalist Mohammed Sherri this month.
An investigation last year by +972 and the Israeli outlet Local Call revealed that the IDF has an informal unit known as the "Legitimization Cell,” which seeks to find tenuous links between journalists and militant groups to justify assassinating them.
As one source explained, the cell's members seek out reporters they believe are “smearing [Israel’s] name in front of the world" by reporting evidence of the country's conduct.
While Al-Manar is the official news outlet for Hezbollah and Al Mayadeen is considered to be closely tied with the militia, Qudah noted that under international law, "journalists are not legitimate targets, regardless of the outlet they work for.”
In less than a month, Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed more than 1,100 people, including at least 121 children, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
Many pieces of civilian infrastructure—including hospitals, schools, and residential buildings—have been attacked, and Israel has issued forced evacuation orders that have led more than 1 million people to be displaced from their homes.
On the same day that the three journalists were attacked, the World Health Organization reported that nine paramedics were killed across southern Lebanon in a series of attacks on healthcare infrastructure.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said that by attacking civilian workers carrying out their professional duties, Israel has violated “the most basic rules of international law."
He called it “a blatant crime that violates all norms and treaties under which journalists are granted international protection during armed conflicts."
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