Israel strikes southern Lebanon after evacuation warnings to several villages

Subscribed with another email? Logout and Login with that one. Account subscription benefits alongside Premium Stories, Editorials, Opinions and more. Unlock these with Subscription The View From India Looking at World Affairs from the Indian perspective. First Day First Show News and reviews from the world of cinema and streaming. Today's Cache Your download of the top 5 technology stories of the day. Science For All The weekly newsletter from science writers takes the jargon out of science and puts the fun in! Data Point Decoding the headlines with facts, figures, and numbers THEdge At the cutting edge of education and careers Health Matters Ramya Kannan writes to you on getting to good health, and staying there Gender Agenda Stories from beyond the binary. The Hindu On Books Books of the week, reviews, excerpts, new titles and features. Published - June 05, 2026 11:02 pm IST - DIBBINE Lebanese soldiers deploy at a road in front of destroyed houses in Dibbine village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, June 5, 2026, a day after Israeli forces withdrew following clashes with Hezbollah fighters. | Photo Credit: AP Israel’s air force struck different parts of southern Lebanon on Friday (June 5, 2026), and its military issued evacuation warnings for nine villages, including one that has been spared much of the destruction and has sheltered thousands of people displaced by the three-month war. The Israeli strikes killed nine people in six locations in southern Lebanon, the state news agency reported. Meanwhile, the new warnings forced hundreds of families to flee the village of Anqoun and the area of Aarnaya, on the edge of the predominantly Christian community of Maghdoucheh, near the southern port city of Sidon. Elsewhere, people began to return to their homes to survey the aftermath of fighting between Israeli forces and the Hezbollah militant group. ALSO WATCH Watch: Is the Israel–U.S. alliance straining over Iran? Wide parts of the south have already been devastated by the war. An Associated Press team traveling in the south on Friday (June 5, 2026) saw multiple villages in ruins, including Dibbine, near Marjayoun town, from which Israeli troops withdrew a day earlier. It was the first time Israeli troops pulled out of an area in southern Lebanon since the latest Israel-Hezbollah war began in early March. U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanese troops were at an entrance of Dibbine, clearing rubble and opening roads. But the Lebanese army set up barbed wire at one of the entrances, preventing residents from returning yet. At least one family arrived to search the rubble of its home along the road leading to the village, while the owner of a petrol station in Dibbine looked at his destroyed property and called village residents to report on the destruction he saw from behind the barbed wire. Israel had warned Lebanese residents against returning to villages in the south, saying the area is still a combat zone. The current ceasefire agreement calls for Lebanon’s armed forces to take control of security zones in Lebanon from which the militants would be banned. But the latest deal between Israel and the Lebanese government has been rejected by Hezbollah, which demanded a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a strong ally of Hezbollah who has been acting as a mediator on behalf of the group, echoed the militants' demands. In his first comments since the agreement was announced on Wednesday (June 3, 2026) in Washington, Berri said that he accepts Hezbollah’s withdrawal from the areas south of the Litani River as long as it coincides with the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon. The river, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of the border with Israel, forms the boundary of a 2006 U.N.-established buffer zone in which Hezbollah is banned. Israeli troops have pushed far past the river into southern Lebanon. Mr. Berri added in a written statement that the ceasefire should be “complete and comprehensive,” without any exceptions for land, sea or air, and “without bulldozing and demolishing everything that exists.” He was referring to wide areas that have been demolished by Israeli troops. The war in Lebanon, where Israeli forces have seized large swaths of the south since March 2, threatens efforts to end the Iran war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a globally important conduit for oil, natural gas, fertilizer and other commodities. Iran has demanded that any lasting truce extend to Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces elections later this year, wants to press ahead with Israel’s offensive until Hezbollah no longer poses a threat. In Iran developments, American forces boarded a sanctioned oil tanker linked to the Islamic Republic in the Indian Ocean, the U.S. military said Friday. U.S. Indo-Pacific Command posted on X that the forces boarded the MT Davina, without offering details. U.S. forces around the world have so

Israel strikes southern Lebanon after evacuation warnings to several villages

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Israel strikes southern Lebanon after evacuation warnings to several villages

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