A US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon took effect early on Friday, bringing a tentative halt to weeks of intense Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon.
The 10-day truce opened a narrow window for thousands of displaced families to return amid warnings from Israel and Lebanese authorities.
Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war on March 2, when Israel and the US started a war against Iran, killing its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, triggering the Tehran-aligned Shia group Hezbollah to fire missiles on Israeli positions.
Since then, Israel has intensified its attacks on Lebanon and expanded its invasion in the country’s south, killing more than 2,200 people in Lebanon and displacing over 1 million.
By early morning of the truce, cars were backed up for kilometres on the route leading south to the damaged Qasmiyeh bridge over the Litani River, a key crossing linking the southern coastal city of Tyre to the north.
Vehicles piled high with mattresses, suitcases and salvaged belongings crept forward through a single reopened lane, hastily repaired after an Israeli air strike just a day earlier.
The truce appeared to be largely holding overnight, despite reports of some breaches.
In southern villages like Jibsheet, a trickle of residents returned to flattened apartment blocks and streets littered with chunks of concrete, twisted aluminium shutters and dangling electrical wires.
“I feel free being back,” Zainab Fahas, 23, told AP. “But look, they destroyed everything — the square, the houses, the shops, everything.”
Many did not believe that their ordeal was really over.
“Israel doesn’t want peace,” said Ali Wahdan, 27, a medic walking on crutches over the rubble of the emergency services’ headquarters in Jibsheet.
He was badly wounded in an Israeli air strike that hit the building without warning during the first week of the war.
“I wish it were different,” he said. “But this war will continue.”
In the neighbourhood of Haret Hreik in Beirut’s southern suburb, entire buildings had been reduced to rubble after weeks of intense Israeli strikes.
A local government official in Haret Hreik said Israel struck the neighbourhood 62 times over the last six weeks.
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