Beirut, Lebanon:

Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it launched more than 200 rockets and explosive drones at Israeli military positions on Thursday as tensions have soared amid the almost nine-months-old war raging in Gaza.

The Iran-backed operative group said its latest attack, which followed the launch of over 100 rockets the previous day, came in response to Israel’s killing of a senior Hezbollah commander in south Lebanon.

Israel did not report any deaths in its northern border area, where most communities have been evacuated, but quickly said it had responded with strikes on targets in southern Lebanon.

Israel and Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian group Hamas, have exchanged near daily cross-border fire since the Gaza war erupted on October 7, stoking fears the clashes could escalate into all-out war.

UN chief Antonio Guterres is “very worried about the escalation of the exchange of fire”, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday, warning of the risk to the wider Middle East “if we were to find ourselves in a full-fledged conflict”.

Hezbollah and Hamas are part of an Iran-led “Axis of Resistance” against Israel and the United States, a regional alliance that also includes Yemen’s Huthi rebels and groups in Iraq and Syria.

The Israeli military said Thursday its forces were “striking launch posts in southern Lebanon” after “numerous projectiles and suspicious aerial targets crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory”.

It said that most were intercepted by air defence systems but that “fires broke out in a number of areas in northern Israel” following the attacks.

Israel on Wednesday killed a senior Hezbollah commander, Mohammed Naameh Nasser, near the Lebanese coastal town of Tyre.

A source close to the group described him as the “Hezbollah commander responsible for one of three sectors in south Lebanon”. Another border sector chief was killed in an Israeli strike last month.

Hezbollah said that “as part of the response to the… assassination carried out by the enemy” it had fired “more than 200 rockets” and “a squadron of explosive drones” at Israeli bases.

Air raid sirens blared across northern Israel in the morning, and an AFP correspondent witnessed rockets crossing the frontier that were intercepted.

Heavy battles rock Gaza

The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Hamas also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 38,011 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

The Israel-Hezbollah border clashes have killed at least 496 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including 95 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

Israeli authorities say at least 15 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed on their side of the UN-patrolled border.

The Gaza war at the heart of the regional tensions has meanwhile raged on, and gun battles, air strikes and artillery shelling rocked Gaza City for an eight day on Thursday.

Israeli troops over the past day had “destroyed tunnel routes in the area and eliminated dozens of terrorists in close-quarters combat with tank fire, and in aerial strikes,” said the military.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said at least five people were killed in a strike that hit a Gaza City school. 

Fears of renewed heavy fighting have also surged in Gaza’s southern areas near Khan Yunis and Rafah after the military on Monday issued a sweeping evacuation order that the UN said impacted 250,000 people.

Witnesses reported air strikes and intense artillery shelling in western Rafah on Thursday.

Efforts towards truce

Israel has faced an international outcry over the soaring civilian death toll, punishing siege and mass destruction in Gaza.

The UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, this week again called for an end to the “maelstrom of human misery”.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted Israel will destroy Hamas and bring home the remaining hostages.

US President Joe Biden, under growing domestic pressure over Washington’s support for Israel, in late May outlined a roadmap for a six-week ceasefire and exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

There has been little progress since, but Hamas said Wednesday it was communicating with officials in Qatar and Egypt as well as Turkey with an eye to ending the conflict.

Hamas said its Qatar-based political chief Ismail Haniyeh had “made contact with the mediator brothers in Qatar and Egypt about the ideas that the movement is discussing with them with the aim of reaching an agreement”.

Netanyahu’s office and the Mossad intelligence service said “Israel is evaluating the (Hamas) remarks and will convey its reply to the mediators”.

The main stumbling block so far has centred on Hamas’s demand for a permanent end to the fighting — a demand Netanyahu and his right-wing nationalist government allies strongly reject.

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

Washington:

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on a visit to Washington that his country does not want war in Lebanon but was ready to inflict “massive damage” on Hezbollah if diplomacy fails.

“We do not want war, but we are preparing for every scenario,” Gallant told reporters during the visit that ended Wednesday.

“Hezbollah understands very well that we can inflict massive damage in Lebanon if a war is launched,” he said.

Tensions have been rising, with growing skirmishes along the border between Israel and the Iranian-backed militia, since the October 7 attack by Hamas that prompted a relentless Israeli retaliatory campaign in Gaza.

Gallant said that Israel has killed more than 400 Hezbollah “terrorists” in recent months.

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

Washington:

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Israel during a Monday meeting with its defense minister to avoid further escalation in Lebanon as they discussed efforts to reach a deal to free hostages in Gaza.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was on a visit to Washington seeking to reaffirm the value of ties with Israel’s top ally, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly chastised the United States for what he said was a delay in weapons deliveries.

In a two-hour meeting with Gallant at the State Department, Blinken discussed indirect diplomacy between Israel and Hamas on an agreement that “secures the release of all hostages and alleviates the suffering of the Palestinian people,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

Blinken also “underscored the importance of avoiding further escalation of the conflict and reaching a diplomatic resolution that allows both Israeli and Lebanese families to return to their homes,” Miller said in a statement.

Tensions have been rising with growing exchanges of fire between Israel and Lebanon’s Iranian-backed militant movement Hezbollah.

Netanyahu has said Israeli forces are winding up the most intense part of the Gaza war and will redeploy to the northern border, although he cast the move as defensive.

Gallant also met CIA chief Bill Burns, the key US pointman in negotiations to free hostages from Hamas.

“I would like to emphasize that it is Israel’s primary commitment to return the hostages, with no exception, to their families and homes,” Gallant said before starting his meetings.

“We will continue to make every possible effort to bring them home,” he said.

The minister made no further comment as he left the meeting with Blinken, as a few dozen protesters outside the State Department chanted to call him a “war criminal.”

– Arms shipment dispute –

President Joe Biden on May 31 laid out a plan for a ceasefire in Gaza and release of hostages.

Hamas, which launched the conflict with its October 7 attack on Israel, has come back with its own demands, and the United States hopes the gaps can be bridged.

Netanyahu, who has faced major protests calling for him to accept the deal, in recent days has annoyed the Biden administration by accusing Washington of cutting back arms and ammunition deliveries.

Gallant took a different tack, saying: “The alliance between Israel and the United States, led by the US over many years, is extremely important.”

Other than Israel’s own military, “our ties with the US are the most important element for our future from a security perspective,” he said.

Biden, who has faced criticism from parts of his own base over his support for Israel, held back a shipment that included heavy 2,000-pound bombs.

Netanyahu — who has close relations with Biden’s rivals in the Republican Party — told a cabinet meeting on Sunday that there was a “dramatic drop in the supply” of US weapons around four months ago.

Asked about his latest remark, Miller told reporters, “I don’t understand what that comment meant at all.”

“We have paused one shipment of high-payload munitions. That shipment remains on pause,” Miller told reporters.

“There are other weapons that we continue to provide Israel, as we have done going back years and years, because we are committed to Israel’s security. There has been no change in that,” Miller said.

Miller said the United States would also press Israel to work on longer-term arrangements after the end of the fighting.

“We don’t want to see in Rafah what we’ve seen in Gaza City and what we’ve seen in Khan Yunis, which is the end of major combat operations and then the beginning of Hamas reasserting control,” he said, referring to two other major cities targeted by Israel earlier in the war.

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

Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah speaks during a televised address at a memorial service for Taleb Abdallah, a senior field commander in the group who was killed on June 11 alongside three other Hezbollah fighters in an Israeli strike on the south Lebanon village of Jouaiyya, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Lebanon on June 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Lebanon’s Hezbollah has new weapons and intelligence capabilities that could help it target more critical positions deeper inside Israel in case of an all-out war, the militant group’s leader warned on June 20.

Hassan Nasrallah’s comments came as the monthslong cross-border conflict simmering between Hezbollah and Israel appears to be reaching a boiling point and a day after a top U.S. envoy met Lebanese officials in his latest attempt to ease tensions.

Also read: Hezbollah | The party of God

“We now have new weapons. But I won’t say what they are,” he said in a televised address commemorating a top Hezbollah commander killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon last week. “When the decision is made, they will be seen on the front lines.”

Hezbollah has used locally made explosive drones for the first time since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza last October, as well as surface-to-air missiles against Israeli jets.

Nasrallah said in 2021 that Hezbollah has 100,000 fighters but now he claimed the number is much higher, without elaborating. He also said he has rejected offers from allied countries and militias in the region that could add tens of thousands to his ranks.

A nearly 10-minute-long video allegedly filmed by a Hezbollah surveillance drone and released Tuesday shows parts of Haifa — a city far from the Israel-Lebanon border. Nasrallah in his speech Wednesday said Hezbollah has much more footage — an apparent threat it could reach sites deep in Israel.

Israel’s military chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, visited Israeli air-defense soldiers near the border with Lebanon on Wednesday, saying Israel was aware of Hezbollah’s capabilities demonstrated in the video and has solutions for these threats.

“The enemy only knows a small part of our capabilities and will see them at the needed time,” he said.

Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, has been exchanging strikes with Israel almost daily since the war in Gaza erupted on Oct. 7, with the aim to pull Israeli forces away from the embattled Gaza Strip.

Hezbollah’s attacks escalated after Israel expanded its offensive last month into the southern Gaza city of Rafah and spiked further last week after an Israeli strike killed high-ranking Hezbollah commander Taleb Sami Abdullah, the most senior militant killed so far during the Israel-Hamas war.

Also Tuesday, the Israeli army said it has “approved and validated” plans for an offensive in Lebanon, although the decision to actually launch such an operation would have to come from the country’s political leadership.

The warnings by both sides followed a visit by President Joe Biden’s senior adviser Amos Hochstein, who this week met with officials in Lebanon and Israel in his latest attempt to deescalate tensions. Hochstein told reporters in Berlin on Tuesday that it was a “very serious situation” and that a diplomatic solution to prevent a larger war was “urgent.”

Nasrallah said a wider war with Lebanon would have regional implications and that Hezbollah would attack any other country in the region backing Israel, citing Cyprus, which has hosted Israeli forces for training exercises.

Only a cease-fire in Gaza would halt the Lebanon-Israel border fighting or the attacks on Western and Israel-linked targets from Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Iraqi militias allied with Hezbollah.

Israel views Hezbollah as its most direct threat, and the two fought a 34-day war in 2006 that ended in a stalemate. Hebollah’s military capabilities have significantly grown since then, and the United States and Israel estimate the group, along with other Lebanese militant factions, has about 150,000 missiles and rockets. Hezbollah also has been working on precision-guided missiles.

Hezbollah said at least four of its fighters were killed in Israeli strikes on Wednesday as Hochstein returned to Israel for a new round of meetings there.

Lebanese state media reported the strikes along the border and near the coastal city of Tyre, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) away. The Israeli military said two Hezbollah launches damaged several vehicles in northern Israel.

Kamel Mohanna, the head of the Amel Association, an NGO providing health services in different areas of Lebanon, said the association health center in the town of Khiam was hit and damaged by the Israeli shelling.

Israeli strikes have killed more than 400 people in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah and other militants, but also over 80 civilians and non-combatants. In northern Israel, 16 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed by strikes launched from Lebanon.

Beirut:

Lebanon’s powerful armed group Hezbollah announced on Thursday it had used a drone capable of firing rockets at a military position in one of its latest attacks in northern Israel.

Israel and Hezbollah have been involved in near-daily exchanges of fire since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out on October 7.

– Drones, rockets –

Hezbollah announced it had used an “armed attack drone” equipped with two S-5 rockets on a military position in Metula in northern Israel.

The Iran-backed group published a video showing the drone heading towards the position, where tanks were stationed, with the footage showing the moment the two rockets were released followed by the drone exploding.

It was the first time they had announced the use of this type of weapon since the cross-border exchanges with Israel erupted in October.

The Israeli army said three soldiers were wounded in Thursday’s attack.

Hezbollah-affiliated media said that the drone’s warhead consisted of between 25 and 30 kilogrammes (55 and 66 pounds) of high explosive.

Military analyst Khalil Helou told AFP that the use of drones offers Hezbollah the ability to launch the attack from within Israeli territory, as they can fly at low altitudes, evading detection by radar.

Hezbollah also announced on Wednesday that it had launched a strike using “attack drones” on a base west of the northern Israeli town of Tiberias.

That attack was the group’s deepest into Israeli territory since fighting flared, analysts said.

In recent weeks, the Lebanese militant group has announced attacks that it has described as “complex”, using attack drones and missiles to hit military positions, as well as troops and vehicles.

It has also used guided and heavy missiles, such as Iran’s Burkan and Almas missiles, as well as the Jihad Mughniyeh missile, named after a Hezbollah leader killed by Israeli fire in Syria in 2015.

Helou, a retired general, said that depite its new weaponry, Hezbollah still relied primarily on Kornet anti-tank missiles with a range of just five to eight kilometres.

They also use the Konkurs anti-tank missile, which can penetrate Israel’s Iron Dome defence system.

– Sign of escalation? –

Hezbollah has a large arsenal of weapons, that it has expanded significantly in recent years.

The group has said repeatedly that it has advanced weapons capable of striking deep inside Israeli territory.

Analysts have described the skirmishes between Israel and Hamas as a war of “attrition”, in which each side is testing the other, as well as their own tactics.

Hezbollah has expanded the range of its attacks in response to strikes targeting its munitions and infrastructure, or its military commanders.

One such Israeli strike on Wednesday targeted the village of Brital in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley, with the Israeli army later announcing it had hit a “terror target related to Hezbollah’s precision missile project”.

Helou said Hezbollah’s targeting of the base near Tiberias and its use of the rocket-equipped drone “can be interpreted as a response to the attack on Brital, but it remains a shy response compared to the group’s capabilities”.

He suggested that the Israeli strike likely hit a depot for Iranian missiles that had not yet been used by Hezbollah.

“Hezbollah does not wish to expand the circle of the conflict,” Helou said.

“What is happening is a war of attrition through which it is trying to distract the Israeli army” from Gaza and seeking to prevent it from “launching a wide-ranging attack on Lebanon”.

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

Smoke rises above Lebanon, following an Israeli strike, amid ongoing cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Israel’s border with Lebanon in northern Israel on May 5, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Official media in Lebanon said an Israeli strike on May 5 on a southern village killed four family members, with Hezbollah announcing retaliatory attacks, in the latest cross-border violence since the Gaza war erupted.

Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group have exchanged regular cross-border fire since Palestinian militant group Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel sparked war in the Gaza Strip.

Fighting has intensified in recent weeks, with Hamas ally Hezbollah stepping up its attacks on northern Israel, and the Israeli military striking deeper into Lebanese territory.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said Sunday’s strike in Mais al-Jabal killed “four people from a single family”, reporting that the raid was carried out by Israeli aircraft.

It identified the dead as a man, a woman and their children aged 12 and 21, and said two other people were wounded.

A Lebanese security source, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media, confirmed the strike killed “four civilians”.

Mais al-Jabal municipality chief Abdelmoneim Shukair had earlier told AFP that three people were killed, saying they were a couple and their son.

The Israeli military said in a statement later Sunday that “this morning… fighter jets struck a military site in the area of Mais al-Jabal”, without providing further details.

More retaliatory fire

Hezbollah in a statement said it fired “dozens of Katyusha and Falaq rockets” at Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel “in response to the horrific crime that the Israeli enemy committed in Mais al-Jabal”.

It later said it fired dozens more Katyusha rockets across the border “as part of the response” to the Mais al-Jabal strike, and claimed a string of other attacks on northern Israel, some in stated retaliation to the raid.

The Israeli army said in the statement that “approximately 40 launches were identified crossing from Lebanon… a number of which were intercepted.”

“No injuries were reported,” it said, adding the army “struck the sources of the fire”.

It also said “fighter jets struck Hezbollah military structures and terrorist infrastructure” in several areas of southern Lebanon.

Lebanon’s NNA reported Israeli strikes on various locations in the country’s south.

Hezbollah has repeatedly declared that only a ceasefire in Gaza will end its attacks on Israel, which it says are in support of Gazans and Hamas.

Both the United States and France have made diplomatic efforts to calm tensions on the Lebanese-Israeli border.

In Lebanon, at least 390 people have been killed in nearly seven months of cross-border violence, mostly militants but also more than 70 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

Israel says 11 soldiers and nine civilians have been killed on its side of the border.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides.

A house lies in ruins in the border area of Shebaa in southern Lebanon, following an Israeli strike on April 27, 2024 , amid ongoing cross-border tensions as fighting continues between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza.
| Photo Credit: AFP

UNICEF, the children’s agency of the UN, said on April 30 that conflict on Lebanon’s border between Hezbollah militant group and Israel was taking a heavy toll on children, with thousands out of school and healthcare “critically impacted”.

“We are deeply alarmed by the situation of children and families who have been forced from their homes,” Edouard Beigbeder, the Lebanon representative for UNICEF, said in a statement. He also highlighted “the profound long-term impact the violence is taking on children’s safety, health and access to education”.

“We call for an immediate ceasefire and the protection of children and civilians,” he said. “We must redouble our efforts to make sure every child in Lebanon is in school and learning, is protected from physical and mental harm, and has the opportunity to thrive.”

Eight children have been killed in Lebanon and 75 wounded since hostilities started following Israel’s war on Gaza, UNICEF said, citing figures from the country’s Health Ministry.

More than 92,000 people, almost a third of them children, have meanwhile been displaced, according to the UN’s migration agency. “Should this conflict continue to escalate… the repercussions for children will be devastating,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told a press conference in Geneva.

Variables in play: Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israel from hilltops and villages in Lebanon in support of its ally Hamas after their cross-border attack triggered a fierce Israeli offensive in Gaza.
| Photo Credit: AP

As the Lebanese Christian village of Rmeish marks its first Easter since the Gaza war erupted, residents say a parallel confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel is dragging them into a conflict they did not choose.

Like many Christians elsewhere in southern Lebanon, residents are angry and fearful their homes could be caught in the cross-fire and their families forced to flee — permanently — from their ancestral villages near the Lebanon-Israel border.

Earlier this week, a Rmeish resident confronted a group of armed men trying to launch rockets at Israel from within the village. Some villagers rang church bells to sound the alarm, and the armed men moved off to fire rockets from another neighbourhood, according to Mayor Milad al-Alam and Rmeish residents. “What we have been saying for the last six months is: among our own homes, keep us neutral. Any strike in return would have brought huge losses,” Mr. Alam said.

Hezbollah began launching rockets from hilltops and villages in southern Lebanon at Israel on October 8 in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, which carried out a cross-border attack into Israel the previous day that triggered a fierce Israeli land, air and sea offensive on the Gaza Strip.

Christian criticism

The villagers’ resentment reflects criticism from Christian clerics and politicians opposed to Hezbollah, who have long accused the group of undermining the state through its possession of a controversial arsenal that outguns the national Army, and of monopolising decisions of war and peace.

“We have nothing to do with this war. Do they (Hezbollah) want to displace us?” said a 40-year-old resident of Rmeish who asked not to be identified, fearing that criticising Hezbollah could bring reprisals. Iran-backed Hezbollah, which holds sway over much of the Lebanese state, denied its fighters had tried to launch rockets from Rmeish.

More than a dozen sects coexist in a precarious balancing act in tiny Lebanon, reflected in a power-sharing system that reserves government posts by religion. The presidency and central bank governor — two top posts reserved for Maronite Christians — have been vacant since October 2022 and July 2023 respectively due to divisions over choosing successors.

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have been displaced both internally and to foreign countries by conflict and hardship over the last century, with the 15-year civil war seeing killings and kidnappings according to sect. Some 90,000 people have been displaced from southern Lebanon since the conflict broke out in October.

Christian lawmaker Ghada Ayoub, who represents a constituency in the south and hails from the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese Forces party, said that Christians were standing up to Hezbollah “because it is encroaching on their presence,” and that the war was deepening fissures in Lebanese politics.

“The question is now: are there even any shared points left that we can carry on with — that we can build a state with?” she said.

The area most impacted by the shelling is the border strip, home to about a dozen Christian villages including Rmeish. They are nestled in rolling hills of olive groves, pine trees and tobacco fields — now too dangerous to plant or harvest due to shelling.

“The areas around us were really affected — there have been strikes 500, 600 metres away. Our harvests have been ruined,” said Joseph Salameh, a local official in the town of Klayaa, about 4 km from Lebanon’s southern border.

‘Imminent exodus’

Lebanon was already hit hard by a financial meltdown that began in 2019. With tourists staying away due to bombing, shops closed and schools shuttered or began sheltering thousands displaced by the fighting, villages across the predominantly Shia Muslim south have been dealt another severe economic blow, prompting fears among locals of a Christian exodus. “Now the war has added to it and is encouraging our children to leave… Christians are no longer able to take on more than others because the problems of this country have become too many,” Mr. Salameh said.

Lebanon’s top Christian clerics have also sounded the alarm in weekly sermons. Maronite Patriarch Boutros al-Rai called early on in the Gaza war for Lebanon to stay on the sidelines and more recently said war had been “imposed” on Christians.

Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Beirut Elias Audi asked earlier this month if it was fair for “one faction of Lebanese to decide on behalf of everyone, and take unilateral decisions that not all Lebanese agree on”. With outcry mounting, Hezbollah’s main Christian ally the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) has even ramped up criticism, saying its nearly two-decade alliance with Hezbollah had been “shaken”.

“The main problem that arose recently was crossing the limits of defending Lebanon and getting involved in a conflict in which we cannot make decisions,” FPM head Gebran Bassil said.

Their alliance had provided Hezbollah with supporters from a religious community outside its traditional base, but the pair have split over several issues in the last two years — including who should be Lebanon’s next President.

Michael Young at the Carnegie Middle East Center said Mr. Bassil’s comments were an attempt to gain some leverage over Hezbollah by signalling a rift — but also reflected Christian unease with the status quo.

“The mood among the Christian community is almost a psychological divorce from the system. They don’t feel that they have a say in the system and in a way it’s true — Hezbollah is in control of much of the system,” Mr. Young said.

The war of words that unfolded following the ‘prayer’ highlights larger, long-standing schisms in Lebanon over Hezbollah. File.
| Photo Credit: AP

The nun stood in front of a group of young students at a Lebanese Christian school and asked them to pray for the “men of the resistance” in southern Lebanon who she said were defending the country.

The men to whom nun Maya Ziadeh was referring were members of the Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah, which has been clashing with Israel across a volatile border for nearly six months, becoming a critical regional player as the Israel-Hamas war persists in Gaza.

A video capturing Ms. Ziadeh’s comments was widely circulated online earlier this month, outraging some who accused her of “brainwashing” the children and imposing her political views. Others rallied to her support, commending her stance as courageous and honourable.

The war of words that unfolded highlighted larger, longstanding schisms in Lebanon over Hezbollah, now amplified by the Lebanon-Israel border clashes and by fears that an already crisis-hit Lebanon could be dragged into an all-out war.

“There are sharp divisions over Hezbollah’s weapons,” said Sami Nader, director of the Institute of Political Science at Saint Joseph University of Beirut. And while there’s wide support for the Palestinian cause, he said, there are “differences over the degree of such support.”

Lebanon is home to multiple religious groups. Politically, the presidency is given to a Maronite Christian, the parliament Speaker post to a Shia Muslim and the Prime Minister’s post to a Sunni Muslim.

Although Hezbollah has alliances with figures from other religious groups, the base of its support lies in the Shia community, while many Christians and Sunnis accuse the group of hijacking the country. The nun’s speech generated added attention — and for some, furor — in particular because it came from a Christian religious figure.

‘Men of resistance’

In the recent video, Ms. Ziadeh called for praying for the “children, people and mothers of the south and … for the men of the resistance,” describing those who fail to do so as “traitors,” a characterisation that many found troubling, especially given the young age of her audience.

“In the south, there are students your age who say that ‘our only dreams are to protect our land,’” the nun told the children.

Lebanese Christian anti-Hezbollah activist Antonios Tawk criticised Ms. Ziadeh on X, calling on the Maronite Catholic church to act “because our children are being brainwashed.”

Meanwhile, Gebran Bassil, head of the Free Patriotic Movement party, Hezbollah’s main Christian ally, argued online that when Ms. Ziadeh called for prayers, “she was implementing the teachings of Jesus.”

Ms. Ziadeh couldn’t be reached for comment.

Officials with Hezbollah, a Shia military and political powerhouse in Lebanon, say the group’s cross-border strikes are in support of Gaza and argue they divert some Israeli forces that would otherwise be focused on Hamas in Gaza, where the territory’s health officials say the Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians.

To Hezbollah’s critics in Lebanon, the fighting is a reminder that the group’s weapons constitute “a threat …because they give Hezbollah a monopoly over decisions outside state structures,” said Randa Slim, senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

Rmeich, Lebanon:

At Lebanon’s border with Israel, residents of a Christian village are hoping war can be avoided even as they prepare for the possibility of worsening hostilities between the Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah and Israel.

Located just a couple of kilometres (miles) from the frontier, the village of Rmeich has already suffered fallout from three weeks of clashes along the border between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, the dominant force in south Lebanon.

Half of its residents have fled north since shells began crashing into hills nearby. With the olive harvest disrupted, their livelihoods have also been affected by south Lebanon’s worst violence since Hezbollah and Israel went to war in 2006.

The village, along with the rest of Lebanon, is feeling the turbulence unleashed by the conflict raging some 200 km away between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, an ally of the heavily armed Hezbollah.

Those who remain in Rmeich appear reluctant to discuss the politics of the crisis that has brought conflict to their doorstep, trying to preserve some normalcy in the village whose 18th century church still holds a mass three times a day.

“I won’t say we’re feeling safe but the situation is stable,” the village priest Toni Elias, 40, said as a military drone buzzed overhead.

“If we don’t hear the drone, we think something odd is going on. We’re used to it everyday, 24/7,” Elias said.

Rmeich is one of around a dozen or more Christian villages near the border with Israel in predominantly Shi’ite Muslim south Lebanon. During the 2006 war, some 25,000 people from surrounding towns sought shelter in Rmeich.

Memories of the 2006 conflict loom large. Rmeich locals and charities have set up a makeshift hospital at a school, in case the clashes between Hezbollah and Israel – so far largely contained to areas at the border – get worse.

“We won’t use it unless there is a war and roads get closed, and inshalla (God willing) this won’t happen,” said Georges Madi, a doctor from the village.

WAR AND PEACE

The tensions are weighing on the local economy, compounding hardship for people still suffering the effects of Lebanon’s devastating financial collapse four years ago.

“If the war is prolonged, we can’t stay here. There is no work or money,” said Charbel Al Alam, 58, who makes his living from farming tobacco, historically an important industry for south Lebanon.

“In the 2006 war, tobacco plants dried out in the fields and no one was able to harvest it. No one compensated us,” he said.

While farmers had been able to gather this year’s crop, they worry whether they will be able plant next year’s. Business in Rmeich has generally come to a halt, several local said.

Unlike the surrounding areas, there is no sign of the yellow and green Hezbollah flag in Rmeich.

While avoiding any criticism of Hezbollah, Rmeich mayor Milad Al Alam said the Lebanese army should be the sole military force in Lebanon – a view voiced by Hezbollah’s opponents who say its arsenal has undermined the state.

“We wish the decision of war and peace were in our hands. If it were, the situation would have been different,” he said.

The town has no shelter or official evacuation plan for its 4,500 remaining residents if war intensifies, he added. “People were stuck in the village for 17 days in 2006,” he said.

Elias, the priest, said he was confident Rmeich would not be hit: “As long we’re here, living in the village. We don’t want war, we’re a peaceful village … so the village remains safe if others flee to it.”

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