MANSOURI, Lebanon — The center of Mansouri lies in ruins: single-story shops blown out, goods scattered, glass along the sidewalk, homes crumpled into unrecognizable piles. The mosque is blackened, its minaret split. A crushed Lebanese civil defense vehicle sits among the rubble.
Mansouri, a small village in southern Lebanon about six miles from the Israeli border, now sits less than a mile from the “yellow line” Israel says marks territory occupied by its troops. Abed Ammar, 35, an emergency responder, returned with his family at the start of the recent temporary ceasefire to their lightly damaged hilltop house. From the main street he hears what he says are controlled demolitions in neighboring villages occupied by Israel. “The demolitions are louder than airstrikes,” he says. “We can hear them very clearly from here.”
The Israeli military has been public about carrying out controlled demolitions in many of the roughly 55 towns and villages it now occupies in southern Lebanon, posting videos showing entire neighborhoods destroyed in seconds by detonations. Israel says the demolitions target Hezbollah infrastructure and aim to create a buffer zone to prevent attacks on northern Israeli communities. Critics and rights experts say the demolitions, together with intense airstrikes over two months, have devastated civilian infrastructure — actions that may violate international law and could amount to war crimes.
United Nations-appointed human rights experts condemned the pattern, saying the issuance of broad evacuation orders and the destruction of housing echo Israel’s operations in Gaza and show “utmost contempt for the international legal order, for diplomacy, and above all for the lives of civilians and the environment in Lebanon.” Israeli officials have openly likened the operations in southern Lebanon to those in Gaza. “The fate of southern Lebanon will be the same as that of Gaza,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said after the military demolished what it said was a large Hezbollah weapons cache.
An NPR team reached as far south as possible during the ceasefire, to the edge of the Israeli-occupied zone, and found buildings pancaked by airstrikes, personal possessions amid rubble, and cars gutted by fire. Lebanese authorities estimate about 62,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed since March. Access to the occupied area is blocked to residents and journalists, but satellite analysis shows extensive leveling of towns and villages, a pattern experts say resembles Gaza’s destruction.
Corey Scher, a postdoctoral researcher at Oregon State University’s Conflict Ecology lab, which monitors conflict zones by satellite, has been studying both Gaza and southern Lebanon. He says previously damaged areas in Lebanon are now being completely leveled, forming large swaths that are “effectively wiped off the map.” He and others note a common sequence: widespread airstrikes, followed by ground incursions and then controlled demolitions.
Israel has also struck critical infrastructure, including bridges over the Litani River — taking out every major crossing into the south during the last two months of fighting. In the final hours before the most recent ceasefire, an Israeli strike destroyed the coastal Qasmiyeh bridge, the last remaining southbound crossing. Israel contends bridges were used to move weapons for Hezbollah; humanitarian groups point out these crossings also serve civilians and facilitate aid and emergency access.
Humanitarian organizations warn that water and electricity infrastructure has been heavily damaged. Oxfam said in March that Israeli forces were “using the Gaza playbook” in Lebanon, highlighting extensive harm to water systems, electricity networks and bridges that cut vital supplies and services to entire towns and villages. Israel denies deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure, framing its strikes as necessary for national security.
For residents of occupied communities, despair is widespread and returning home may no longer be an option. Fifty-year-old Zainab Mahdi, from the coastal village of Naqoura near the border, has been living in a temporary shelter in Tyre since 2024 after fleeing earlier fighting. She had been rebuilding her damaged home during the last ceasefire; U.N. peacekeepers later told her the house and most of the village are gone. “I’m angry, and I’m sad,” she says. “But I’m also feeling a lot of fear — fear about how long it will be before we can return? What if that doesn’t happen in my lifetime?” She recalls the garden she tended, which she has heard was bulldozed, and vows she will return when she can: “Just smelling our own soil is enough.”
Israel previously occupied parts of southern Lebanon for nearly two decades; officials now say they are prepared to remain for months or even years. Meanwhile, residents face the loss of homes, services and livelihoods as towns across the south lie devastated by a campaign that rights groups say mirrors the tactics used in Gaza.