Emergency services, residents and environmental groups say military dropping flares to destroy forests and crops
Firefighters and residents of south Lebanon have accused the Israeli military of lighting wildfires in the region, as forested areas burned down in blazes sparked by Israeli bombing.
Environmental groups said the fires in recent weeks were part of a longstanding Israeli practice of targeting Lebanon’s natural environment.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military dropped flares in a wooded area outside Khiam, in south Lebanon, sparking blazes. When firefighters attempted to extinguish the flames, a drone struck close by, forcing them to withdraw, said the head of the civil defence in the Nabatieh region, Hussein Fakih.
“Most of our missions are now related to fires,” Fakih said. “There are enormous areas of woodland that have burned, I don’t have the exact figures, but in the areas close to the [frontline], around 30-40% of the land has been affected by fires.”
The Israeli military has caused fires across south Lebanon, in particular in olive groves and on agricultural land, according to videos and testimony from emergency services, in the nearly two-months since the 17 June ceasefire that mostly ended fighting between Hezbollah and Israel.
“They started doing this right after the ceasefire, and there have been incendiary bombs every day,” Fakih said. “Small drones come out and drop incendiary materials, [white] phosphorus shells are fired at the woodlands, in addition to illumination flares that they drop during the daytime so the vegetation catches fire.”
Firefighters and residents of other areas in south Lebanon describe similar blazes being started by Israeli munitions and drones in dry scrub and woodlands. On Friday, Israeli munitions created large wildfires in two heavily forested areas, in Kfarchouba, close to the border, and between Jezzine and the western Bekaa valley.
The civil defence station chief in the area, Samir Hardan, said a fire was started near Kfarchouba on Friday afternoon after a drone dropped a munition in woodlands. After battling blazes overnight and extinguishing them on Saturday, a second drone started another fire on Sunday, Hardan said.
Firefighters are required to coordinate their movements with the Lebanese army, which relays their request to a “deconfliction” group that includes the Israeli military. They were given permission to fight the fires at only two spots, and not other areas where fires were raging.
According to environmental groups, the fires are part of a pattern of Israeli attacks against Lebanon’s environment that threaten the country’s woodlands and the biodiversity they support.
Hisham Younes, the founder of Green Southerners, a Lebanese conservation organisation, said: “These are long-established woodlands, dominated by productive stone pine alongside oak. They perform critical functions. The wider area is also an important passage and resting ground for migratory birds.”
Younes called the Israeli attacks an ecocide. “It is not about any single fire or attack, but a pattern of destruction that progressively erodes the ability of ecosystems to function, regenerate and sustain life. When those cascading effects also undermine livelihoods and people’s ability to return to and remain on their land, environmental destruction becomes inseparable from the wider transformation of the territory itself.”
Since fighting started on 8 October 2023 when Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel in solidarity with the Hamas-led attack a day earlier, Israel has repeatedly targeted Lebanon’s woodlands.
The Israeli military has said in the past that Hezbollah used these forested areas as cover for its fighters and its tunnels.