Israeli forces have surrounded the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil and launched a direct assault on it, the Israeli military announced on Monday, as diplomatic efforts to halt the conflict gained cautious momentum. The Israeli military's Arabic-language spokesman, Colonel Avichay Adraee, said troops of the 98th Division had completed the encirclement of Bint Jbeil — a strategic town near the Israeli border long associated with Hezbollah — after killing more than 100 of the group's fighters there over the past week. Separately, Israeli authorities said a major wave of strikes last week killed five senior Hezbollah commanders and more than 250 fighters in total, as the overall death toll from the conflict surpassed 2,000.
The conflict erupted in early March after Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group, began firing rockets at Israel on 2 March, itself a response to US-Israeli strikes that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Israel responded with massive airstrikes on Beirut and a ground invasion of the south. Ceasefire talks have now been scheduled, though strikes continued unabated on Monday even as negotiations were being arranged.
The ongoing assault is drawing sharp international criticism. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, visiting Beirut for talks with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Foreign Minister Youssef Raggi, wrote publicly that he had come to convey Italy's solidarity in the face of what he called Israel's "unacceptable attacks against the civilian population." Israel responded by summoning Italy's ambassador in protest — the second such diplomatic confrontation between the two countries in days, after Rome had previously objected to Israeli forces firing warning shots near a convoy of Italian UN peacekeepers stationed in southern Lebanon.
At the European level, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned after a Brussels meeting that Israeli strikes on Lebanon, combined with the threat of a closure of the Strait of Hormuz — a critical oil shipping lane — were destabilising the broader region. "No peace is possible while Lebanon is in flames," she said, capturing a widely shared European view that the conflict risks spiralling beyond its current boundaries.
Why this matters: the fighting in Lebanon has become one of the most consequential fronts of a rapidly expanding Middle East conflict. With diplomatic pressure mounting, a civilian death toll in the thousands, and ceasefire talks now formally on the agenda, the coming days may prove decisive — both for Lebanon's future and for whether the region as a whole slides deeper into war.