The story so far: As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran enters its fourth week, another, perhaps more brutal, war is unfolding in the region. On March 16, Israel announced the launch of a ground offensive in Lebanon against Hezbollah. It has also carried out massive air strikes in southern Lebanon and the southern outskirts of Beirut, killing at least 1,000 people and displacing about a million. The ground offensive is concentrated in hilltop towns in southern Lebanon, where the Israel Defence Forces are facing stiff resistance from Hezbollah fighters.

Why did Israel launch the offensive?

On paper, a ceasefire had been reached between Hezbollah and Israel in November 2024. The ceasefire was reached after a month-long campaign aimed at weakening Hezbollah, a Shia militant group and political party in Lebanon that maintains close ties with Iran.

When Israel launched its invasion of Gaza after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, Hezbollah fired rockets into the Shebaa Farms, a Lebanese territory occupied by Israel. Israel responded with air strikes, triggering further Hezbollah rocket attacks that displaced thousands of Israelis from the Upper Galilee region.

In September 2024, Israel assassinated Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in an air strike. The Israeli plan was to disrupt Hezbollah’s command structure before launching a ground offensive. During the ground battle, Israel pushed Hezbollah fighters away from the border and occupied strategically important regions in southern Lebanon. In November that year, Israel agreed to a ceasefire, but it continued air strikes nearly every day in Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah positions. Hezbollah hardly retaliated.

On February 2026, after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed by a joint Israeli-American air strike, Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets into northern Israel. Israel retaliated with air strikes, which was followed by the ground offensive.

What is Hezbollah?

Over the past five decades, Israel has carried out multiple attacks in Lebanon. In 1978, Israel launched an incursion into southern Lebanon to push the Palestinian militias based in the region, under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), to the north of the Litani River. In 1982, Israel launched another invasion with the same objective. It managed to force the PLO to relocate from Lebanon, but the consequences of the war led to the rise of Hezbollah as a militant Shia organisation. Iran, where the Shia clergy established an Islamic government in 1979, backed Hezbollah.

When Israeli troops stayed in southern Lebanon to keep a buffer on the Lebanese side of the border, Hezbollah emerged as the major resistance force. Israeli troops, faced with Hezbollah’s guerrilla attacks, were forced to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000 — which was celebrated by Hezbollah as the first “Arab victory against Israel”.

In 2006, Israel attacked Lebanon again, to dismantle Hezbollah’s military infrastructure. After a month-long campaign, Israel had to agree to a ceasefire and pull back. This allowed Hezbollah to rise as a major socio-political and militant movement of Lebanon’s sectarian system, where the army is very weak. But Israel has always called Hezbollah — which it designates as a terrorist outfit alongside the U.S. and their Western partners — an “Iranian proxy”. There was an uneasy calm along the Israel-Lebanon border after the 2006 war, but it was broken by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.

How strong is Hezbollah today?

Hezbollah, because of its long resistance history and battlefield experience, is generally seen as a powerful fighting force. After the 2006 war, they joined the Syrian civil war to fight alongside the forces of President Bashar al-Assad. Hezbollah’s involvement played a crucial role in turning around the civil war from 2015 to 2018.

Hezbollah, a state within the state in Lebanon, possesses tens of thousands of rockets and missiles. However, in September 2024, Israel’s pager explosions, which targeted Hezbollah’s mid-level commanders, and killed the group’s top leadership, threw it into disarray. Around that time, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, a former al-Qaeda jihadist who was running Syria’s Idlib, started a campaign to take over Damascus. The Syrian Army, which was targeted by hundreds of Israeli air strikes, was in a bad shape. Syria’s three main supporters were Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah. Russia was busy with Ukraine. And Iran’s space for manoeuvre was limited. Hezbollah was pushed back by Israeli attacks. It took only 12 days for Golani’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syria branch) to capture Damascus.

The fall of Assad’s government in December cut a vital link between Hezbollah and Iran, which further weakened both sides. From the early 1980s, Iran had provided money, weapons and training to Hezbollah, and Baathist Syria acted as a land bridge between Iran and Syria (through Iraq, at least since 2003). In subsequent months, Israel continued to pound Hezbollah and the group hardly retaliated. But Hezbollah was also using this period to rebuild its command structure and replenish its arsenals, preparing for an eventual war. And when Israel and the U.S. killed Khamenei in February 2026, they joined the war, drawing in thousands of troops into Lebanon.

What does Israel want to achieve?

Israel has declared that it wants to dismantle Hezbollah’s military capabilities, push them away from southern Lebanon, and create a buffer inside the Lebanese territory. Israel has issued evacuation orders for the whole of southern Lebanon and some neighbourhoods in the north of the Litani River. It has bombed some bridges on the river to cut off supplies for Hezbollah. Israel is also pressing the Lebanese government to take action to disarm Hezbollah.

Hezbollah’s version is that it is defending Lebanese territory. It has fired more than 1,000 rockets and drones at Israel since March 2, in a clear message that it still possesses attack capabilities. Israel is also facing stiff resistance in the hilltop towns of southern Lebanon, particularly in Khiam, a high plateau overlooking the Hula Valley in the south. While Israel seeks to push Hezbollah out militarily, an approach it tried several times in the past and failed, Hezbollah, though weakened by regional developments, is resisting with asymmetrical tactics. It is the Lebanese people who are caught in the middle.

Published – March 22, 2026 03:26 am IST

A Lebanese soldier sits on top of a military vehicle outside the municipality building of the southern Lebanese border village of Blida in the aftermath of an Israeli army raid on the village, on October 30, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Civil Defence said “eight personnel from the… Baalbek regional centre were killed”. (Representational)

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted that he had “okayed” the pager attacks in Lebanon, which had killed nearly 40 and wounded 3,000 Iran-backed Hezbollah members in September.

“Netanyahu confirmed Sunday that he greenlighted the pager operation in Lebanon,” his spokesperson Omer Dostri told news agency AFP.

Thousands of pagers exploded in Hezbollah strongholds on September 17 and 18 – which Iran and Hezbollah blamed on Israel. Some of the Hezbollah members who were injured reportedly lost their fingers, while some lost their eyesight.

Hezbollah had called the blasts an “Israeli breach” of its communications network and vowed to avenge the attack.

The pagers were used by Hezbollah members as a low-tech means of communication to evade Israeli location-tracking.

The blasts came just hours after Israel announced it was broadening the aims of the war sparked by Hamas’ October 7 attacks to include its fight against the group’s ally Hezbollah along the country’s border with Lebanon.

This week, Lebanon had filed a complaint with the United Nations Labour Agency over the deadly attack, calling it an “egregious war against humanity”.

Israel and Hezbollah have been fighting across the Lebanese border since the war in Gaza erupted after Hamas attacked Israeli towns on October 7 last year. Since then, several Hezbollah fighters, including former chief of the Iran-backed group Hassan Nasrallah, have been killed. Last month, Israel’s army also confirmed that it “eliminated” Hezbollah’s Hashem Safieddine, an apparent successor of Nasrallah, in a strike in southern Beirut.

On Thursday, Israel conducted airstrikes on Hezbollah’s main bastion in south Beirut, with one raid hitting an area near Lebanon’s only international airport – causing minor damage to some of the airport’s buildings, including flag carrier Middle East Airlines’ premises.

Since October last year, more than 3,000 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon.

Lebanon’s health ministry said Saturday seven people including two children were killed in Israeli strikes on the southern city of Tyre a day earlier, with rescuers still searching for missing people under the rubble.

“Israeli enemy strikes on the city of Tyre killed seven people including two girls, and injured 46 others,” the ministry said, adding that body parts had been found and will be “identified with DNA testing”.

It added that rubble was being cleared following the strikes as part of ongoing efforts to locate missing persons.

The ministry had on Friday reported a toll of three killed and 30 injured in the strikes.

AFP photos showed rescuers carrying bodies on stretchers amid the wreckage, as rubble and twisted metal were strewn across the street.

Earlier on Saturday, Lebanon’s official National News Agency had said the deadly strikes targeted three buildings in the coastal city, causing “massive damage to dozens of homes”.

The NNA also said “enemy fighter jets” destroyed two heritage houses in the southern city of Nabatiyeh.

Hezbollah said on Saturday it targeted Israeli troops, locations and military sites including a base and an area north of Haifa, in addition to downing an Israeli Hermes 450 drone over a south Lebanon village.

Israel intensified its air campaign on Lebanon in September and later sent in ground troops after a year of cross-border clashes.

The escalation came after nearly a year of low-intensity, cross-border attacks by Hezbollah in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas following its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.

More than 3,110 people have been killed in Lebanon since the cross-border exchanges began, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Smoke rises from an Israeli airstrike on Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, early Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
| Photo Credit: AP

Israeli naval forces captured a senior Hezbollah operative in north Lebanon, an Israeli military official said Saturday, as the conflict between the Iran-backed group and Israel showed few signs of easing.

Earlier on Saturday, Lebanese authorities said it was investigating whether Israel was behind the capture of a Lebanese sea captain who was taken away by a group of armed men who had landed on the coast near the northern town of Batroun on Friday.

“The operative has been transferred to Israeli territory and is currently being investigated,” the military official said, without providing the name of the person in detention.

The operation marks the first time Israel has announced it deployed troops deep into northern Lebanon to take a senior Hezbollah operative captive since the conflict between the two sides escalated in late September. Since then, Israeli forces began a ground invasion of southern Lebanon and intensified its airstrikes across the country, including southern Beirut and the eastern Bekaa valley, killing most of Hezbollah’s senior commanders.

Hezbollah issued a statement describing what happened as a “Zionist aggression in the Batroun area.” The statement did not give details or confirm whether a Hezbollah member was captured by Israel.

Two Lebanese military officials confirmed to The Associated Press that a naval force landed in Batroun, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of Beirut, and abducted a Lebanese citizen. Neither gave the man’s identity or said whether he was thought to have links to Lebanon’s Hezbollah group. They did not confirm whether the armed men were an Israeli force.

Three Lebanese judicial officials told AP the operation took place at dawn Friday, adding that the captain might have links with Hezbollah. The officials said an investigation is looking into whether the man is linked to Hezbollah or working for an Israeli spy agency and an Israeli force came to rescue him.

Both the military and judicial officials spoke on the condition of anonymity as they were unauthorized to share details about the incident or the ongoing investigation.

Soon after Israel went public about the operation, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati called on Lebanon’s foreign minister to file a complaint against Israel at the U.N. Security Council.

Israel has carried out in the past commando operations deep inside Lebanon to kidnap or kill Hezbollah and Palestinian officials.

Recounting the event, Lebanese residents from the apartment building where the man was seized said the armed group introduced themselves as state security.

“We were terrified. They were breaking into the apartment next to ours,” Hussein Delbani told The Associated Press near where the man was captured. “I thought a state agency was doing a security operation,” said Delbani, who was displaced from south Lebanon a month ago when the Israel-Hezbollah war erupted.

He said he saw from his balcony people down on the coast and they screamed again for him to go inside.

Hamie told Al-Jadeed the man was a captain of civilian ships. He graduated in 2022 and in late September joined the Batroun’s Maritime Sciences and Technology Institute for additional courses. Hamie said that the man lived some 300 meters (980 feet) from the institute.

Hamie’s remarks came shortly after two Lebanese journalists posted a video on social media showing what appeared to be about 20 armed men taking away a man from in front a house, his face covered with his shirt.

Kandice Ardiel, a spokesperson for the U.N. peacekeeping force deployed in south Lebanon, denied allegations by some local journalists who said that the peacekeepers helped the landing force in the operation. The U.N. mission, known as UNIFIL, has a maritime force that monitors the coast.

“Disinformation and false rumors are irresponsible and put peacekeepers at risk,” Ardiel said.

Hezbollah began firing rockets, drones and missiles from Lebanon into Israel in solidarity with Hamas immediately after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza. The yearlong cross-border fighting boiled over to full-blown war on Oct. 1, when Israeli forces launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon for the first time since 2006.

Smoke rises from an Israeli airstrike on Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, early Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
| Photo Credit: AP

Israeli naval forces captured a senior Hezbollah operative in north Lebanon, an Israeli military official said Saturday, as the conflict between the Iran-backed group and Israel showed few signs of easing.

Earlier on Saturday, Lebanese authorities said it was investigating whether Israel was behind the capture of a Lebanese sea captain who was taken away by a group of armed men who had landed on the coast near the northern town of Batroun on Friday.

“The operative has been transferred to Israeli territory and is currently being investigated,” the military official said, without providing the name of the person in detention.

The operation marks the first time Israel has announced it deployed troops deep into northern Lebanon to take a senior Hezbollah operative captive since the conflict between the two sides escalated in late September. Since then, Israeli forces began a ground invasion of southern Lebanon and intensified its airstrikes across the country, including southern Beirut and the eastern Bekaa valley, killing most of Hezbollah’s senior commanders.

Hezbollah issued a statement describing what happened as a “Zionist aggression in the Batroun area.” The statement did not give details or confirm whether a Hezbollah member was captured by Israel.

Two Lebanese military officials confirmed to The Associated Press that a naval force landed in Batroun, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of Beirut, and abducted a Lebanese citizen. Neither gave the man’s identity or said whether he was thought to have links to Lebanon’s Hezbollah group. They did not confirm whether the armed men were an Israeli force.

Three Lebanese judicial officials told AP the operation took place at dawn Friday, adding that the captain might have links with Hezbollah. The officials said an investigation is looking into whether the man is linked to Hezbollah or working for an Israeli spy agency and an Israeli force came to rescue him.

Both the military and judicial officials spoke on the condition of anonymity as they were unauthorized to share details about the incident or the ongoing investigation.

Soon after Israel went public about the operation, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati called on Lebanon’s foreign minister to file a complaint against Israel at the U.N. Security Council.

Israel has carried out in the past commando operations deep inside Lebanon to kidnap or kill Hezbollah and Palestinian officials.

Recounting the event, Lebanese residents from the apartment building where the man was seized said the armed group introduced themselves as state security.

“We were terrified. They were breaking into the apartment next to ours,” Hussein Delbani told The Associated Press near where the man was captured. “I thought a state agency was doing a security operation,” said Delbani, who was displaced from south Lebanon a month ago when the Israel-Hezbollah war erupted.

He said he saw from his balcony people down on the coast and they screamed again for him to go inside.

Hamie told Al-Jadeed the man was a captain of civilian ships. He graduated in 2022 and in late September joined the Batroun’s Maritime Sciences and Technology Institute for additional courses. Hamie said that the man lived some 300 meters (980 feet) from the institute.

Hamie’s remarks came shortly after two Lebanese journalists posted a video on social media showing what appeared to be about 20 armed men taking away a man from in front a house, his face covered with his shirt.

Kandice Ardiel, a spokesperson for the U.N. peacekeeping force deployed in south Lebanon, denied allegations by some local journalists who said that the peacekeepers helped the landing force in the operation. The U.N. mission, known as UNIFIL, has a maritime force that monitors the coast.

“Disinformation and false rumors are irresponsible and put peacekeepers at risk,” Ardiel said.

Hezbollah began firing rockets, drones and missiles from Lebanon into Israel in solidarity with Hamas immediately after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza. The yearlong cross-border fighting boiled over to full-blown war on Oct. 1, when Israeli forces launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon for the first time since 2006.

File picture of Hezbollah senior official Sayyed Hashem Safieddine
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The Israeli military said Tuesday (October 22, 2024) that one of its airstrikes outside Beirut earlier this month killed a top Hezbollah official who had been widely expected to be the group’s next leader.

There was no immediate confirmation from the militant group about the fate of Hashem Safieddine.

Safieddine, a powerful cleric within the party ranks, was expected to succeed Hassan Nasrallah, one of the group’s founders, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in September.

Israel said Safieddine was killed by an airstrike in early October in a southern suburb of Beirut. Around 25 other Hezbollah leaders were killed during the strike, Israel said.

Israeli strikes in recent months have killed much of Hezbollah’s top leadership, leaving the group in disarray.

The Beirut suburb where Safieddine was killed was pummeled by a series of fresh airstrikes on Tuesday. The Israeli military leveled a building in the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut that it said housed Hezbollah facilities.

The airstrike came 40 minutes after Israel issued an evacuation warning for two buildings in the area that it said were used by Hezbollah.

Hezbollah’s chief spokesman, Mohammed Afif, said the group was behind the Saturday drone attack on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home in the coastal town of Caesarea. He hinted that it might attempt future strikes on Netanyahu’s home. Israel has said neither the prime minister nor his wife were home at the time of the attack.

Hezbollah has stashed hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold in a bunker built under a hospital in Beirut, Israel’s military said on Monday (October 21, 2024), adding it will not strike the facility as it keeps up attacks against the group’s financial assets.

Fadi Alameh, a Lebanese lawmaker with the Shi’ite Amal Movement party and the director of the hospital in question, Al-Sahel, told Reuters that Israel was making false and slanderous claims and called on the Lebanese Army to visit and show it only had operating rooms, patients and a morgue.

Mr. Alameh said the hospital was being evacuated. Israel’s military said it was not going to strike the facility.

Reuters could not independently verify the details provided by the Israeli military’s chief spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, which he said had been collected by Israeli intelligence for years.

Hezbollah could not immediately be reached for comment.

Also read: Israel-Hezbollah conflict: All you need to know about the escalating cross-border tension

In a televised statement, Mr. Hagari said Hezbollah’s former leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, whom Israel killed last month, had built the bunker which was designed for lengthy stays.

“There are hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold inside the bunker right now. I’m calling on the Lebanese government, Lebanese authorities, and the international organizations — don’t allow Hezbollah to use the money for terror and to attack Israel,” Mr. Hagari said.

“The Israeli Air Force is monitoring the compound, as you can see. However, we will not strike the hospital itself,” Mr. Hagari said.

Israeli Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi told troops in Lebanon that overnight between Sunday (October 20, 2024) and Monday (October 21, 2024), aircraft had struck around 30 sites belonging to Al-Qard al-Hassan, which Israel says is Hezbollah’s financial arm.

Mr. Hagari said more strikes against Hezbollah financial sites were to continue.

A huge fireball lit up the night sky and plumes of smoke rose over south Beirut early Sunday (October 6, 2024) as Israel unleashed intense air strikes targeting Hezbollah, nearly a year since the Gaza war erupted.

Israeli forces were on high alert ahead of Monday’s anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack, which sparked the war.

After a devastating year-long conflict in Gaza, Israel has now shifted its focus to northwards to Hezbollah, Hamas’s Iran-backed ally in Lebanon.

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