Phosphorus shells hit towns in southern Lebanon overnight

Heavy Israeli artillery fell on three places in the south of Lebanon early on Saturday, the country's National News Agency said: the town of Mansouri, the farmland on the edge of Majdal Zoun, and the ground around Bayt al-Sayyad. The agency said the same three had been under attack through the night before that.

It reported extensive damage to houses in Bayt al-Sayyad, and said no home in the town had been left untouched.

The agency said phosphorus shells were among the munitions fired overnight and into the early hours, falling on the outskirts of Dawhat Kfar Remman, the ground around Dabsha hill and the wooded area of Ali al-Taher. Warplanes carried out two air strikes on Ali al-Taher hill itself, on the northern edge of Nabatieh al-Fawqa.

Explosions were also reported in Hadatha, Beit Yahoun and Aita al-Jabal, alongside machine-gun fire directed at the valleys nearby. Drones stayed over the towns and villages of the western and central sectors of the south through the same hours, according to the agency.

White phosphorus is an incendiary chemical that ignites on contact with air. It burns skin to the second and third degree, and its fumes can injure the airways and cause asphyxiation. Fired as an airburst over an area where civilians live densely, it is prohibited under international law, because the harm it does cannot be confined to a target.

Rights researchers have documented its use along this border before. Images and video released by Human Rights Watch in 2024 showed the munitions striking residential buildings in Kafr Kila, Mays al-Jabal, Boustane, Markaba and Aita al-Chaab. The organisation had reported a year earlier that Israeli forces used the weapon on the Gaza Strip and on two rural areas of the Israel-Lebanon frontier.

Every place the agency named on Saturday is an inhabited town, village or the farmland attached to one. A shell that starts a fire in an orchard on a town's outskirts does not stop being a weapon when the shelling ends, and the residents who came back to these villages are the people who will put the fires out.