#yaroun

This is Yaroun in South Lebanon, right now.

One of the oldest villages on Earth.

Israel has annihilated everything.

Every home destroyed. Every sign of civilian life erased.

When Israel launched its invasion of southern Lebanon in September, it publicly set narrow goals for the operation: “limited, localized,” with “targeted ground raids” aimed at stopping cross-border fire and degrading Hezbollah’s command structure.

But an NBC News investigation found that the Israel Defense Forces have created a zone of widespread destruction along Lebanon’s border with Israel — destroying 42% of the buildings in the areas it has seized. To reach these findings, NBC News verified soldiers’ social media posts and examined satellite images as well as Sentinel-1 satellite radar data provided by Corey Scher of the CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University.

In a statement to NBC News, an IDF spokesperson said Hezbollah embeds military assets in and beneath civilian areas and cultural sites.

“The IDF will continue to destroy terrorist infrastructure as needed to achieve the war’s objectives,” the statement added. “The IDF does not seek to cause excessive harm to civilian infrastructure and strikes only based on security needs and the safety of Israeli civilians.”

Hezbollah, a powerful Lebanese militia and political party backed by Iran, began firing missiles into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023. It said it was supporting Hamas, which launched a terror attack in Israel a day earlier, drawing a response from the IDF and sparking more than a year’s worth of back-and-forth fire.

The two sides agreed to a ceasefire deal on Tuesday, drawing to a close a conflict that has displaced 96,000 Israelis and 1.4 million Lebanese, according to their respective governments. The fighting has killed over 3,000 people in Lebanon, according to the Health Ministry, and more than 70 people in Israel.

New Images Show Lebanese Border Villages Flattened in Israeli Invasion

By Lauren Leatherby, Malachy Browne, Josh Holder and  Euan Ward 

Oct. 9, 2024

A village abandoned and largely destroyed. Scores of homes leveled, a damaged health clinic and a centuries-old mosque now little more than rubble — toppled, a video suggests, in what appears to be a controlled explosion by the Israeli military. 

These are some of the first glimpses to emerge from southern Lebanon, a week after Israel began its ground invasion there as part of its multipronged fight against Hezbollah. They can be seen in video and satellite images verified by The New York Times.

Tank tracks leading from Israel across the border to the Lebanese village of Yaroun are visible in satellite images taken on Saturday by Planet Labs, a commercial satellite provider. So are newly constructed banks of earth where the Israeli military set up positions for tanks and other military vehicles. 

Over the past week, the Israeli military has flattened large parts of two border villages: Maroun al-Ras and Yaroun, seen in the video above that was filmed by the Israeli military and verified by The Times. 

Hezbollah has been launching rockets aimed at Israel from southern Lebanon since last October in solidarity with Hamas. Since then, both sides have been engaged in back and forth exchanges that have displaced tens of thousands of Lebanese and Israelis. 

Israeli officials say the goal of the ground invasion in Lebanon is to destroy Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, which is closely embedded in villages near the border, and to return displaced Israeli villagers to their homes in the north. 

Israel has scaled up its attacks on Hezbollah in recent days, sending ground forces into southern Lebanon from at least seven points and ordering Lebanese civilians to evacuate towns as far as 20 miles from the border. Hezbollah says it has targeted Israeli troops in both Maroun al-Ras and Yaroun with rocket barrages.

The fight is taking place as Israeli forces battle Hamas militants across another border, in the Gaza Strip. 

In southern Lebanon, videos and photographs show Israeli soldiers patrolling the streets and setting up positions alongside homes. One video showed soldiers raising the Israeli flag over a destroyed park in Maroun al-Ras.