Lebanese Army Deploys Troops to War-Torn Areas as Cease-Fire Appears to Hold
The New York Times
Israel’s military said it had fired on people arriving in parts of southern Lebanon because they were violating a cease-fire agreement with the militant group Hezbollah.
The Lebanese Army said on Thursday that it had moved troops into war-ravaged Hezbollah strongholds outside Beirut and in the country’s south and east, an important element of the cease-fire agreement that paused more than a year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
The deployments to southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley and the Dahiya region outside Beirut came as Israel’s military warned Lebanese civilians not to return to villages deep in the country’s south. Thousands of people began to make the trek back to their war-ravaged communities on Wednesday after the U.S.-brokered cease-fire took effect at 4 a.m. local time.
That agreement appeared to be holding on Thursday. It ended more than 13 months of cross-border fighting and an Israeli ground invasion that ushered in Lebanon’s deadliest conflict since the end of its civil war in 1990.
The war forced roughly a quarter of Lebanon’s population to flee their homes, and when the cease-fire began, many were eager to return. But on Thursday, the Israeli military said it had opened fire on people arriving in several areas of southern Lebanon because they were violating the agreement.
Avichay Adraee, an Arabic language spokesman for the Israeli military, warned residents who had fled those towns to stay away “until further notice.” He also said movement within those towns was prohibited.
The Israeli military “does not intend to target you and therefore you are prohibited at this stage from returning to your homes from this line south until further notice,” Mr. Adraee said in an online post that included a map showing part of the country’s south marked in red. “Anyone who moves south of this line — puts himself in danger.”
