Since 7 October 2023, the use of air- and ground-launched explosive weapons by Israeli armed forces in densely populated areas in Lebanon, in response to rocket fire from Hezbollah and other armed groups, has caused civilian death and injury, damaged critical civilian infrastructure, forced waves of displacement and impeded access to essential services. This article explores the use of explosive weapons by Israeli armed forces and armed groups in Lebanon, highlighting the severity of harm to civilians caused by the use of these weapons in populated areas over the course of nearly 18 months of conflict.
Introduction
Since 7 October 2023, the use of air- and ground-launched explosive weapons by Israeli armed forces in densely populated areas in Lebanon, in response to rocket fire from Hezbollah and other armed groups, has caused civilian death and injury, damaged critical civilian infrastructure, forced waves of displacement and impeded access to essential services.
Extensive airstrikes carried out by Israeli armed forces since conflict escalated on 23 September 2024, have been particularly devastating for civilians in Lebanon, exceeding the bombing of Gaza during the opening days of its military actions in October 2023.
This article explores the use of explosive weapons by Israeli armed forces and armed groups in Lebanon, highlighting the severity of harm to civilians caused by the use of these weapons in populated areas over the course of 18 months of conflict.
Background
Conflict between Israel and armed groups in Lebanon escalated shortly after 7 October 2023, when for eleven months, armed forces exchanged cross-border attacks. These eleven months were marked by periodic escalations of airstrikes and other military action by Israeli armed forces, most often in response to rocket fire from armed groups in Lebanon. In all, Israeli armed forces exchanged at least 10,214 attacks with Hezbollah and other armed groups in Lebanon through September 2025, according to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). More than 8,300 attacks, about 81 percent, were carried out by Israel, killing at least 752 people. Hezbollah and other armed groups were responsible for 1,901 attacks, killing at least 33 Israelis.1
Conflict escalated when thousands of pagers and radios exploded throughout Lebanon on 17 and 18 September 2024, killing at least 37 people, including children and medical personnel, and injuring thousands, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health (MoPH).2 Though Hezbollah armed actors were targeted in these attacks, many explosions occurred in populated areas and in places where civilians were concentrated across six Lebanese governates.3 The Israeli military did not comment on the attacks or claim responsibility for them, though United States’ and other officials have attributed them to Israeli Defense Forces.4
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Lebanese Health Ministry Casualty Figures The Lebanese health ministry collects and reports numbers of casualties by collating information provided by both private and state-run hospitals in Lebanon. This is undertaken by an emergency operations center within Lebanon’s health ministry that was developed with support from the United Nations.5 Like the Gaza Ministry of Health, Lebanon’s health ministry does not disaggregate its casualty data by civilians and combatants killed. It does, however, provide numbers of women and children that were killed, in addition to men. |
In a devastating escalation of explosive violence by Israeli armed forces on 23 September 2024, Israeli airstrikes hit more than 1,600 targets in just one day, approximately 300 more attacks than the first days of conflict in Gaza, and “a number that has few, if any, precedents in 21st-century warfare,” according to Airwars. Attacks occurred across Lebanon though were concentrated mostly in the south, and the Lebanese health minister reported that 558 people were killed in these strikes.6
The Israeli military said Hezbollah responded by firing 250 rockets toward Israel on 23 September 2024, though most were intercepted by Israeli air-defense missiles. The Israeli military reported that one man was wounded by shrapnel from these rockets.7
Israeli airstrikes then generally increased ahead of an Israeli ground invasion of southern Lebanon on 30 September 2024, when tanks crossed the Lebanese-Israeli border.8 Though a ceasefire was put in place on 27 November 2024,9 there were several dozen airstrikes in and near Beirut on 26 November just hours before the ceasefire deal was agreed.10
Since then, civilians in Lebanon have returned to their homes to find varying degrees of damage and destruction while the ceasefire has been occasionally tested with renewed rocket fire by armed groups and military action by Israeli armed forces. For example, Israel carried out airstrikes in Beirut in March 2025 – the first attacks on Lebanon’s capital since the ceasefire in November – destroying a residential building in a Beirut suburb after claims of rockets fired from Lebanon towards Israeli-territory.11
Civilian death and injury
Between October 2023 and March 2025, attacks by Israeli armed forces killed more than 4,000 people and injured about 17,000, according to the MoPH.12 This includes at least 240 children, 700 health and rescue workers and 700 women.13
The use of air- and ground-launched explosive weapons have also killed and injured journalists and peacekeepers, including two strikes on 13 October 2023 that killed a Reuters journalist and injured six others,14 and tank fire that struck the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) headquarters injuring two peacekeepers.15
Amnesty International documented at least three strikes on residential buildings that killed entire families, including one in the village of al-Ain on 20 September 2024, one in Aitou in northern Lebanon on 14 October 2024, and another in Baalbeck city on 21 October 2024.16
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Aitou Airstrike on Displaced Family An airstrike by the Israeli armed forces destroyed a four-story building in the village of Aitou on 14 October 2014. According to Amnesty International, the house had been rented to internally displaced people from the village of Aitaroun in south Lebanon. While one man was targeted in the strike, 23 civilians were also killed, including a five-month old infant who was found the day after the strike in a nearby truck and was presumably flung from the house during the strike.17 Amnesty International researchers found munition fragments at the site of the attack that were most likely from a Mk-8- series aerial bomb, between 500 and 2000 pounds. Jinane Hijazi, whose11-month-old child was killed in the attack, told Amnesty International researchers that the airstrike occurred 15 minutes after the reported target of the strike had arrived at the house. In the strike, “I’ve lost everything, my entire family, my parents, my siblings, my daughter. I wish I had died that day too,” Jinane said.18 |
Additionally, Hezbollah reportedly fired thousands of munitions into Israel and the Syrian Golan Heights. At least 30 civilians were killed in these attacks, including 12 children who were killed in an attack on Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights.19
23 September 2024 – deadliest day of conflict
In airstrikes conducted by Israeli armed forces on 23 September 2024, 558 people were killed in one day, a death toll that took 18 days to reach in Gaza when conflict began on 7 October 2023.20 Of those who were killed, 50 were children and 94 were women, according to the MoPH. These strikes also damaged hospitals, medical centers and ambulances, and ultimately displaced tends of thousands of people, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).21
Many civilians fleeing the south of Lebanon were held up for hours on the single highway that provides a connection to Beirut and reported airstrikes near the highway and other main roads, according to Human Rights Watch. They fled with little or no cell phone connectivity.22
While the majority of Israeli airstrikes occurred in southern Lebanon, where about a million people lived before conflict escalated in October 2023, some strikes hit close to central Beirut and in the city’s suburbs, heavily populated areas with hundreds of thousands of civilians.23
Between 22 and 25 September, Hezbollah reportedly launched more than 200 rockets, cruise missiles and drones into towns in northern Israel, injuring six people. In one incident on 22 September, a Hezbollah rocket struck a residential neighborhood near Haifa while targeting an Israeli military base and weapons manufacturing location.24
Displacement and attacks on humanitarian aid
In the weeks that followed the escalation of Israeli airstrikes at the end of the September 2024, more than one million people were displaced in the largest wave of displacement in Lebanon in decades. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), entire communities were uprooted, civilian infrastructure was heavily damaged or destroyed, and the displacement situation escalated so rapidly that accurate reporting became challenging.25
More than 875 public facilities, such as public schools and other education complexes, were turned into shelters for civilians fleeing within Lebanon. As facilities quickly reached maximum capacity, Lebanon’s Ministry of Education and higher Education designated at least 120 additional schools as shelters.26
Civilians also fled Lebanon, including more than 177,000 Syrians who had lived in Lebanon for over a decade, who fled back to Syria, along with at least 63,000 Lebanese nationals.27
As civilians fled, Israeli armed forces conducted airstrikes on the main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). These strikes cut off the main highway between Lebanon and Syria, which was the main route for those who fled attacks in Lebanon. Human Rights Watch reported that civilians continued to cross the border on foot, navigating rubble and craters from explosive munitions with young children and belongingins.28
The destruction of the highway also hindered the movement of food and other humanitarian aid.
As of 27 March 2025, more than 93,000 people remained displaced, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). This number likely increased after the Israeli armed forces issued a displacement order for Hadath, Beirut’s southern suburbs, for the first time since the ceasefire was put in place.29
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Attacks on Palestinian refugee camps Airstrikes by Israeli armed forces impacted civilians in Lebanon that had fled conflicts in neighboring countries and territories, including Syria and Palestine, occasionally striking refugee camps directly. UNOCHA reported airstrikes on at least two Palestinian refugee camps in September and October 2024. On 30 September, an airstrike hit El-Buss, a Palestinian camp in Tyr, and on 1 October, another airstrike hit Ein el-Hilweh, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. These two strikes killed at least six people and, in El-Buss, a NGO staff member.30 |
Damage and destruction of civilian infrastructure
The use of explosive weapons by Israeli armed forces damaged and destroyed a large number of civilian infrastructure and disrupted essential services, making it difficult for tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians to return to their homes, according to Human Rights Watch.31
According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), at least 59,577 housing units were damaged, 29 percent of which were destroyed, between October 2023 and November 2024. In Baabda district in the Beirut suburbs, 63 percent of its housing was destroyed, the highest percentage in the country.32 An additional 14,748 businesses were damaged, 26 percent of which were destroyed, and 14,762 agricultural establishments (for example, farming land, forests, poultry, and cattle), of which 19 percent were destroyed.
Other infrastructure, including education and health facilities, roads and sidewalks, telecommunications, and water and wastewater treatment plants, were damaged in at least 989 instances.33 For example, an airstrike by Israeli armed forces on a water filtration and pumping station on 18 November disrupted access to water for about 72,000 residents of the city of Tyre. Water was instead delivered to residents by the South Lebanon Water Establishment in cooperation with international organisations.34
Impeded access to education
As schools in Lebanon turned into shelters to accommodate civilians fleeing attacks, Save the Children reported that by 11 October 2024, at least half of Lebanon’s schools had been used for this purpose, severely disrupting education for the sixth-consecutive year, while 40 percent of school-aged children were displaced.35
A father of three school-aged boys told Save the Children:
“Every time we thought this was it, and we could settle down, take a breath, we were forced to move again. None of my children have received a proper education since 2020. Now, all they care about is making sure we’re safe and together. I never wanted this for them. I wanted them to have the freedom to dream, to chase after those dreams when the time was right, and to live their lives to the fullest. But now, all I want is for them to survive. Dreams have been replaced by basic survival. Food, education, and medication, these things have become distant luxuries.”
At least 60 schools were destroyed in escalating airstrikes in September and October 2024, and nearly all schools were closed, affecting about 1.5 million children.36
Impeded access to healthcare
Lebanon’s healthcare system was greatly impacted by the escalation in Israeli airstrikes since 23 September. In eight days after 23 September, 104 health workers were killed, 142 were injured and health facilities were damaged 75 times, accounting for nearly a third of all attacks on healthcare recorded by Insecurity Insight in Lebanon in 2024. High levels of attacks on Lebanon's health care system continued for the rest 2024, including after the November 27 ceasefire, with seven cases recorded between then and December 31.During this time, Israeli airstrikes killed four health workers and destroyed a women’s and children’s health center.37
According to Insecurity Insight, at least 51 health workers were killed, five hospitals were damaged, and other health facilities were damaged four times in Lebanon between 7 October 2023 and 25 Septembee 2024.38 Since Israeli airstrikes became more extensive on 23 September, there have been at least 220 incidents in which explosive weapons damaged health facilities or killed or injured health workers.39
Conclusion
The use of air- and ground-launched explosive weapons by Israeli armed forces in densely populated areas in Lebanon, in response to rocket fire from Hezbollah and other armed groups, has caused civilian death and injury, damaged critical civilian infrastructure, forced waves of displacement and impeded access to essential services.
The severity of civilian harm in Lebanon during nearly two years of escalation in conflict serves as a stark example of the humanitarian consequences of the use of explosive weapons in populated areas in contexts of conflict throughout the work.
To address and prevent this harm, the international community can look to the Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians from the Humanitarian Consequences Arising from the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas as a framework for action to prevent and address the harm to civilians from the use of these weapons.
In line with the Declaration’s commitments, actions should be taken by Israeli armed forces, and all parties to the conflict in Lebanon, to take into account the effects on civilians from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, to facilitate rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian access to those in need, and to stop the use of explosive weapons in towns and cities in Lebanon.