Israeli air strikes on southern and eastern Lebanon killed at least three people and wounded 23 others late on Friday, the Lebanese health ministry confirmed, in a fresh sign of the fragility of the ceasefire announced in June between Israel and Hezbollah. Strikes hit five locations across the southern Tyre and Nabatieh regions and the eastern Beqaa Valley — a broad agricultural lowland that runs parallel to the Syrian border. The attacks came as Israel separately declared it had seized the Ali al-Taher ridge, a strategically elevated position in southern Lebanon, with Defence Minister Israel Katz describing it as completing Israel's grip on what it calls its "security zone."

The Ali al-Taher ridge sits roughly 15 kilometres from the Israeli border, at 600 metres above sea level, overlooking the entire Nabatieh district and linking border areas to the Tuffah region further south. Israeli officials say Hezbollah built an extensive tunnel network beneath the hill over two decades and used it to launch short-range rockets and drones into northern Israel. A Hezbollah parliamentarian disputed Israel's claim of full control, arguing that continued Israeli strikes on the site contradicted any assertion of operational command. BBC Arabic was unable to independently verify Israel's claim from a separate source.

A BBC team that recently accompanied a UN peacekeeping mission — known as Unifil — into occupied southern Lebanon found a landscape of widespread destruction. Entire villages along the border have been flattened, service roads constructed and residential buildings repurposed for military use. According to Unifil, Israel has established nine military positions in the occupied zone, which now covers roughly 5% of Lebanese territory and extends up to 10 kilometres from the border in places. A Lebanese intelligence official told the BBC that Lebanon's military has recorded more than 5,000 Israeli violations of the June ceasefire deal, including air strikes, drone attacks and near-daily incursions beyond the so-called Yellow Line that marks the limits of the occupied zone.

Hezbollah has not launched attacks against Israel from Lebanese territory since the ceasefire took effect, but has targeted Israeli troops operating inside Lebanon. The Israeli military says it acts against immediate threats and operates within international law; human rights groups contest that some demolitions of civilian infrastructure may constitute war crimes. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians remain displaced. Israeli officials have linked any withdrawal to Hezbollah's disarmament — a condition the Lebanese government says it cannot impose unilaterally — while a US-brokered framework for phased pullbacks from "pilot zones" has stalled, with a European diplomat describing the situation as "heading to a Gaza-like scenario."

The broader regional context adds further pressure. The death toll in clashes between Yemen's Houthi rebels and Saudi-backed government forces reached 129, and US President Donald Trump described the US-Iran conflict — the war in which Israel's current Lebanon operations are embedded — as "small potatoes" for Washington. With Israeli elections scheduled for late October and negotiations over Lebanon at an impasse, analysts see little prospect of a meaningful change in the situation on the ground in the near term.