Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam on Friday visited southern Lebanon, which was ravaged by Israel’s devastating war last year that reduced its territory to rubble.
Lebanese PM visits UN peacekeepers
Salam, whose newly formed cabinet won a vote of confidence in parliament this week, was accompanied by a number of ministers. They travelled to the south of the country by helicopter and visited army barracks in Tyre and Marjaayon, and stopped in Nabatiyeh, where they met with Lebanese soldiers and members of the UN peacekeeping mission UNIFIL.
The prime minister also met residents of Dhaira village, which was heavily damaged during the war. Salam, who was previously the head of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), said according to local media.
“The army is the (sole) defender of Lebanon, and it has the responsibility to maintain the security of the homeland, protect its people, and preserve its sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity. Today, the Lebanese army is fully carrying out its duties and reinforcing its deployment with determination in order to consolidate stability in the south and the return of our people to their villages and homes.”
Salam promised that his government will work to strengthen the Lebanese Armed Forces by increasing its personnel and equipment. Like most of the country’s institutions, the Lebanese military has been hit hard by the unprecedentedly severe financial crisis of 2019, which led to the collapse of the local currency and the destruction of bank savings.
The Lebanese army’s main military sponsor is the US, and in recent years it has also received financial support from Qatar.
During his visit, Salam praised UNIFIL’s role in southern Lebanon.
“I would like to express my appreciation for UNIFIL’s role as a peacekeeping force that has been present in Lebanon’s south since 1978, and which a number of its members have given their lives to the mission,” Salam said.
Hezbollah’s weapons coordinator “assassinated”
The US-brokered ceasefire agreement came into force on November 27 after more than a year-long standoff between Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Israel.
In September 2024, Israel abruptly escalated the low-level conflict into full-scale war with massive airstrikes that killed most Hezbollah leaders and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.
Under the November ceasefire agreement, Israeli troops were to completely withdraw from southern Lebanon in 60 days and Hezbollah fighters were to withdraw north of the Litani River as thousands of Lebanese army soldiers were moved into the region.
The deadline for Israeli withdrawal was extended to February 18, and while Israel withdrew the bulk of its forces from southern Lebanon, it retained troops on five strategic heights near the border, which Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday would remain there “indefinitely” until Beirut fully complies with its part of the deal.
Under the ceasefire deal, Hezbollah is obliged to fully disarm and hand over its weapons to the state. The Lebanese government is calling on the mediators, the US and France, to pressure Israel to fully withdraw and end its occupation of the remaining territories in the south.
Israel also continues to launch strikes in the south and east of the country near the border with Syria, saying it is preventing Hezbollah from rearming after a heavy defeat in a war that has decimated the Shiite group’s command staff and killed thousands of its fighters.
The Israeli army said an airstrike on Thursday on Hermel, a town in the northernmost part of the Bekaa in eastern Lebanon, killed “a senior Hezbollah weapons coordinator.”
“Last night, under Intelligence Branch direction, the Israeli Air Force struck Hermel, killing Muhammad Mahdi Ali Shaheen, a Hezbollah terrorist responsible for coordinating weapons smuggling on the Syria-Lebanon border,” an army spokesman said.
