Lebanon towns struck hard
Social posts and reporting said Israel has destroyed the town of Al‑Khiyam in southern Lebanon within a month and flattened neighborhoods in Beirut, leaving civilians under rubble. ( ) Multiple clips circulated showing extensive urban damage and civilian impacts. (x.com)
Israeli strikes and shelling left large parts of Al-Khiyam in southern Lebanon and whole blocks of Beirut’s southern suburbs in ruins during the 2024 Israel-Hezbollah war. (reuters.com 1) (reuters.com 2) Al-Khiyam, also spelled Khiam or Khiyam, sits near the Blue Line on Lebanon’s southern edge, and residents who returned in January 2025 found widespread destruction after Israeli forces withdrew. Reuters video from Jan. 27, 2025 showed civilians and soldiers moving through wrecked streets in the town. (reuters.com) Beirut’s southern suburbs, known as Dahiyeh, were hit by repeated Israeli airstrikes in early October 2024. Reuters images dated Oct. 8, 2024 showed people walking over debris in the aftermath, and Reuters footage from Oct. 7 showed smoke rising from rubble across the district. (reuters.com 1) (reuters.com 2) Israel said it was striking Hezbollah sites and issued evacuation warnings for parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs before some attacks in October 2024. Reporting from Oct. 6 and Oct. 7 described Dahiyeh as a Hezbollah stronghold and said the strikes were among the heaviest on Beirut since the escalation that began in late September. (rte.ie) (channelnewsasia.com) The bombardment in Lebanon intensified sharply on Sept. 23, 2024, according to United Nations agencies. UNHCR said nearly 120,000 people were newly displaced within less than a week, and later October updates put internal displacement at 779,613 people as of Oct. 17, 2024. (unhcr.org) (daleel-madani.org) United Nations officials said the fighting was driving civilians from homes and shelters in both southern Lebanon and Beirut. On Oct. 23, 2024, UN News said the bombing of Beirut and the offensive in the south were fueling a displacement crisis, and a separate U.N. briefing said nearly 1,100 collective shelters were hosting about 192,000 displaced people. (news.un.org 1) (news.un.org 2) Al-Khiyam’s damage also fit a longer pattern in that border town. Asharq Al-Awsat reported on Oct. 31, 2024 that residents described the town as facing a “fourth wave” of destruction since 1948, after earlier devastation in past wars including 2006. (english.aawsat.com) The wider war followed nearly a year of cross-border fire after Hezbollah began attacking Israel in support of Hamas after Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel escalated its Lebanon campaign in September 2024. The Associated Press said that conflict was part of a decades-long confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah. (apnews.com) The legal backdrop is United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, adopted on Aug. 11, 2006, which called for a cessation of hostilities and for Lebanese state forces and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon to deploy in the south as Israeli forces withdrew. UNIFIL says its area of operations runs between the Litani River and the Blue Line. (digitallibrary.un.org) (unifil.unmissions.org) That is why videos of flattened streets in Al-Khiyam and collapsed buildings in Beirut carried weight beyond a single strike. They showed what the 2024 escalation looked like on the ground: a border town and the capital’s southern suburbs both left with blocks of rubble, mass displacement and searches for survivors. (reuters.com) (reuters.com)
