{"id":459746,"date":"2026-05-25T22:15:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T22:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/459746\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T22:15:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T22:15:08","slug":"israel-pounds-lebanon-with-fresh-air-strikes-vows-to-crush-hezbollah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/459746\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel pounds Lebanon with fresh air strikes, vows to ‘crush’ Hezbollah"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Israeli army intensified strikes in southern Lebanon<\/a> on Monday, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a> said he had ordered the military to escalate its offensive in Lebanon in an effort to “crush” Hezbollah<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The airstrikes come as the United States and Iran<\/a> seek to finalise the terms of an agreement to end the Middle East<\/a> conflict, which could include the Lebanon front, where Israel<\/a> and Hezbollah have waged war since March 2.<\/p>\n

Despite a ceasefire<\/a> that came into effect on April 17, Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have continued to exchange fire on a near-daily basis.<\/p>\n

“I have ordered an even greater acceleration of our operations,” Netanyahu said in a video statement posted on his Telegram channel.<\/p>\n

“It is true that they are attacking us with drones<\/a>, including fibre-optic drones, but we have teams working on countermeasures and we will solve this issue … We will intensify our blows, increase our firepower, and we will crush them.”<\/p>\n

Watch moreFresh strikes test fragile Israel-Hezbollah truce<\/a><\/p>\n

Following the call for escalation, an AFP correspondent saw residents fleeing the southern suburbs of Beirut<\/a>, a Hezbollah stronghold.<\/p>\n

The Israeli air force carried out successive strikes in the Bekaa valley in eastern Lebanon on Monday evening, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA).<\/p>\n

Dozens of Israeli strikes earlier targeted several towns and villages in southern Lebanon in the early hours, killing three people in two cars and on a motorcycle, NNA reported.<\/p>\n

Israeli airstrikes then targeted several towns near the ancient city of Tyre, according to the state-run agency.<\/p>\n

Those strikes came after Israel issued evacuation orders for 10 villages, accusing Hezbollah of breaching the truce<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“In light of Hezbollah’s violation of the ceasefire agreement, the Israel Defense Forces are compelled to operate against it with force,” the military’s Arabic-language spokesman Colonel Avichay Adraee said in a social media post, listing the names of the villages.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah, a Lebanese Iran-backed movement, has regularly launched drone attacks against Israeli forces inside Lebanese territory and across the border, including several on Monday.<\/p>\n

Later on Monday, Adraee issued another evacuation warning directed at residents of a building in Rashidieh and two buildings in Burj al-Shamali, near the city of Tyre.<\/p>\n

According to Lebanese authorities, Israeli strikes since early March have killed more than 3,100 people.<\/p>\n

The Israeli military also announced on Monday that a soldier had been killed the previous day in southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n

That brings the number of Israeli soldiers killed since the outbreak of hostilities with Hezbollah to 23. One civilian contractor has also been killed.<\/p>\n

‘Buildings must fall’ <\/p>\n

Two far-right ministers called for an expansion of Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon.<\/p>\n

“There is an urgent need to put an end to the threat posed by Hezbollah’s explosive drones,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in an occupied West Bank<\/a> settlement, said on Telegram.<\/p>\n

“For every explosive drone strike, 10 buildings must fall in Beirut.”<\/p>\n

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, another figurehead of the Israeli far-right, called for a “return to intensive warfare” and for “taking control” of the Zahrani River, located further north than the Litani River.<\/p>\n

The Israeli army, which controls a strip of land approximately 10 kilometres (six miles) deep in Lebanese territory, has designated the Litani River as the boundary of the area to be cleared of Hezbollah fighters.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun<\/a> defended his decision to hold talks with Israel, adding that his demand for a complete Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon was “non-negotiable”.<\/p>\n

Lebanon and Israel, which do not have diplomatic relations, are holding another round of negotiations in Washington on June 2 and 3, preceded by a meeting of military officials from both countries at the Pentagon<\/a> on May 29.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem<\/a> reiterated his opposition to direct negotiations between Lebanon and Israel on Sunday evening and repeated his refusal to have his movement to disarm.<\/p>\n

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio<\/a> condemned his remarks, accusing him of calling for the “overthrow” of the Lebanese government and of wanting to “plunge Lebanon back into chaos”.<\/p>\n

In response to Rubio, Hezbollah MP Ali Ammar called on the US administration on Monday to stop “interfering in Lebanese affairs and destabilising the country”.<\/p>\n

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Israeli army intensified strikes in southern Lebanon on Monday, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[49,42,86,46,11004,88,11741,47,43,40,38,41,39,2586],"class_list":["post-459746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-headlines","tag-hezbollah","tag-israel","tag-joseph-aoun","tag-lebanon","tag-marco-rubio","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}