HEZBOLLAH RETREATS FROM MOST SOUTHERN LEBANON MILITARY BASES: REPORT

Sun 13 April 2025:

The AFP news agency is reporting that most military sites belonging to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon have been placed under the Lebanese army’s control.

The agency cited a source close to the Lebanese armed group.

“Out of 265 Hezbollah military positions identified south of the Litani, the movement has ceded about 190 to the army,” the source was quoted as saying.

The ceasefire deal that ended more than a year of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, including two months of full-blown war, states that only UN peacekeepers and Lebanon’s army should be deployed in the south.

It also mandates Israel to withdraw all of its troops from Lebanon.

But Israel has kept soldiers on five hilltops inside southern Lebanon and has continued to launch air attacks across the country, including the capital, Beirut, claiming it is targeting Hezbollah fighters and weapons caches.

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Israel and Hezbollah have engaged in cross-border clashes for over a year since 8 October 2023, following the start of the war on Gaza.

The clashes turned into a full-blown war last September when Israel launched a widespread bombing campaign and ground invasion of Lebanon.

The attack left more than 4,000 people dead and reduced entire neighbourhoods to rubble.

Under the November ceasefire agreement, Israel was supposed to withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon by 18 February after missing an earlier deadline in January.

However, the Israeli army remains stationed in five points near the border, which it has deemed “strategic”.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah has pulled its forces to the north of the Litani River to be replaced by the Lebanese army.

A Lebanese official told AFP that the deputy US special envoy for the Middle East, Morgan Ortagus, had discussed disarming Hezbollah with senior Lebanese figures during her visit to the country last week.

Ortagus told Lebanese television channel LBCI: “We continue to press on this government to fully fulfil the cessation of hostilities, and that includes disarming Hezbollah and all militias”.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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