Lebanon Reports 39 Killed in Israeli Airstrikes, Threatening Ceasefire

On May 9, 2026, Lebanese authorities reported that Israeli airstrikes had killed 39 people in a single day — drone strikes near Beirut killing four, while a series of attacks across southern Lebanon killed at least 13 more, with additional casualties reported throughout the day [1][2]. The toll was not exceptional. It was, by the grim arithmetic of the past three weeks, roughly average. Since a U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect on April 17, Israeli strikes have killed at least 380 people in Lebanon, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health [3].

The ceasefire, intended to halt the 2026 Lebanon war and create conditions for a lasting settlement, exists on paper. On the ground, it has done little to stop the killing.

The Ceasefire Agreement and Its Terms

The current ceasefire was announced on April 16, 2026, by U.S. President Donald Trump following ambassador-level talks at the White House [4]. It established a 10-day cessation of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon, entering into force the night of April 16-17. On April 23, Trump announced both parties had agreed to a three-week extension, pushing the truce deadline to mid-May [5].

The agreement stipulates that the Lebanese government will prevent Hezbollah and all other armed groups from carrying out operations against Israel, while Israel will not conduct "offensive military operations" against Lebanese targets — civilian, military, or state — by land, air, or sea [6]. A critical clause, however, preserves each side's "inherent right of self-defense, consistent with international law" [6]. This self-defense exception has become the central point of contention.

The framework was modeled loosely on the November 2024 Israel-Lebanon ceasefire agreement, which required Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon and Hezbollah withdrawal north of the Litani River [7]. That earlier agreement, monitored by a U.S.-chaired international mechanism including France and UNIFIL, collapsed in early 2026 after what UNIFIL documented as more than 10,000 Israeli violations [8].

The Toll Since the Truce

The Lebanese Ministry of Health reports that since the war began on March 2, 2026, at least 2,759 people have been killed and 8,512 injured [3]. Of that total, approximately 380 deaths have occurred after the ceasefire began on April 17 [9].

Source: Lebanese Ministry of Health / Al Jazeera

Data as of May 8, 2026CSV

The rate of killing has, if anything, accelerated in May. On May 1 and May 2, more than 40 people were killed each day [10]. On May 7, Israel struck Beirut's southern suburb of Ghobeiri for the first time since the ceasefire, killing Hezbollah Radwan Force operations commander Malek Ballout along with at least 11 others across Lebanon [11]. On May 8, at least 50 people were killed in 24 hours, with strikes hitting Toura, Blat, Nabatieh, Bint Jbeil, and multiple other towns [3].

The question of how many of the dead are civilians remains contested. The Lebanese Ministry of Health tracks casualties through the National News Agency but does not consistently distinguish between combatants and civilians in its daily reporting [10]. Israel claims its strikes target Hezbollah military infrastructure and fighters. Al Jazeera's reporting describes "many of the dead" as civilians, documenting cases including women, children, and a civil defense rescuer killed in the strikes [3][10]. UN Women reported that at least 25 women had been killed and 109 injured in the three weeks following the ceasefire [12]. No independent verification mechanism exists on the ground to adjudicate these competing accounts.

Israel's Legal and Strategic Justification

Israel frames its continued operations as defensive, arguing the ceasefire's self-defense clause permits action against "planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks" by Hezbollah [11]. Israeli Army Chief Eyal Zamir stated the IDF would "seize every opportunity to deepen the dismantling of Hezbollah and continue weakening it" [11]. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has at times asserted that ceasefire terms did not constrain Israeli operations in Lebanon [13].

The legal basis for this position is disputed. Michael Schmitt, a professor at West Point's Lieber Institute who has written extensively on the law of armed conflict, argues that the ceasefire agreement permits Israel to exercise its right of self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter [14]. If Hezbollah used the truce to rearm, Schmitt contends, Israeli operations against those supplies would not breach the agreement [14].

But Schmitt also draws a clear line: "Neither the Understanding nor international law more broadly gives Israel the right to use force to enforce a non-binding commitment by another State" [14]. He distinguishes between operations designed to counter "an ongoing or imminent enemy attack" (permissible) and those with "the primary purpose of weakening the enemy" (prohibited) [14]. The distinction matters — and the pattern of Israeli strikes, which have hit residential areas far from active frontlines, makes the defensive framing harder to sustain.

UN experts have rejected Israel's justification outright. In an April 2026 statement, OHCHR condemned the strikes as "not self-defence" but rather "a blatant violation of the UN Charter, a deliberate destruction of prospects for peace, and an affront to multilateralism" [13]. The UN human rights office said Israeli attacks and Hezbollah rocket fire alike may constitute "serious violations of international humanitarian law" [15].

Hezbollah's Response and the Escalation Spiral

Hezbollah has not observed the ceasefire passively. The group launched 13 targeted military operations against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon in early May, employing fiber-optic cable-controlled drones that killed three Israeli soldiers [10][16]. After the May 7 Beirut strike that killed Malek Ballout, Hezbollah launched missiles and drones at military bases in northern Israel [17].

A senior Hezbollah official stated publicly that the group "will not respect what Israel and Lebanon decide in their latest talks" [5], raising questions about whether the ceasefire framework has any remaining credibility with one of the principal combatants. Hezbollah's operational tempo has roughly doubled since March, with a peak of 97 separate attacks in a single day [16].

The daily exchange of strikes and counter-strikes creates a feedback loop that analysts warn could collapse the truce entirely. Second-stage negotiations are scheduled for May 14-15 in Washington [3], but the escalating violence on both sides narrows the diplomatic space for those talks to produce results.

Displacement and the Humanitarian Crisis

The human cost extends far beyond the death toll. Over 1 million people have been displaced since the war began on March 2, with Israeli evacuation orders covering approximately 14 percent of Lebanon's territory [18]. As of May 8, Lebanon's Disaster Management Unit reported 31,530 families sheltering in collective shelters [3].

UNHCR has described the displacement as ongoing even after the ceasefire, reporting that "shelling, demolitions, evacuation orders, bans on return to certain areas, and movement restrictions continue to drive repeated displacement" [18]. The agency has distributed relief items to 38,100 households in 647 collective shelters and 9,100 households outside shelters, with work underway in 448 shelter sites [18].

The Lebanon Flash Appeal remains critically underfunded, with only 38 percent of required funds received [18]. This mirrors broader global displacement patterns — Syria, Ukraine, and Afghanistan remain the top three refugee-producing countries, with 5.5 million, 5.3 million, and 4.8 million refugees respectively [19].

Source: UNHCR Population Data

Data as of Dec 31, 2025CSV

The 2024 ceasefire period offers a baseline for comparison. During the 12 months of that earlier agreement (November 2024 to November 2025), the Norwegian Refugee Council documented 331 people killed and 64,417 displaced — figures that the current conflict has exceeded in a matter of weeks [8].

The Guarantors' Response — Or Lack of It

The United States, as the primary broker and chair of the monitoring mechanism, bears the most direct responsibility for enforcement. Washington's approach has been to pursue diplomatic extension of the ceasefire while avoiding public confrontation with Israel over specific violations. Trump "pledged that Washington would help Beirut 'protect itself' from Hezbollah" during the extension talks [5] — a formulation that implicitly endorses Israel's framing of the conflict.

At the UN Security Council, the U.S. pushed to remove references to civilian casualties and mass displacement from an April 1 draft press statement [20]. The Council has convened three sessions on Lebanon since March — two open meetings and one closed consultation — and adopted two press statements condemning the killing of peacekeepers and referencing the cessation of hostilities [20]. No binding resolution has been adopted.

France, traditionally the penholder on Lebanon at the Security Council, has been less active than the United States in the current round of diplomacy [20]. Paris called on "all parties to abide fully by the ceasefire and refrain from any action liable to jeopardize the truce's implementation" [21] but has not proposed sanctions or enforcement measures.

The Arab League's permanent observer at the UN stated that "regrettably, the moment in which the Arab-Israeli conflict has expanded into a full-scale regional war" had arrived [22]. Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit condemned strikes on civilian infrastructure while supporting Lebanon's ban on Hezbollah's military activities [22]. No member state has announced military aid conditionality or other concrete leverage against Israel.

The gap between condemnation and action is wide. No party with enforcement capability has indicated willingness to use it.

The 2006 Precedent and What It Suggests

The pattern has historical antecedent. After the 2006 Lebanon War, UN Security Council Resolution 1701 established a ceasefire requiring Israeli withdrawal, Hezbollah disarmament, and UNIFIL deployment to southern Lebanon [23]. The resolution's implementation was uneven from the start: Israel conducted near-daily overflights of Lebanese territory, while Hezbollah rearmed rather than disarming [23].

The international community's response to those violations offers a preview of the current dynamic. As the Washington Institute's analysis noted, Resolution 1701 "failed completely, in large part because the Lebanese Armed Forces were unwilling to prevent Hezbollah from returning to these areas, and also because the international community lost interest in the resolution once the war ended" [23].

The multiple Gaza ceasefires follow a similar trajectory — agreements reached under pressure, violated within days or weeks, condemned in statements that carry no enforcement mechanism, and eventually overtaken by renewed fighting. The structural problem is consistent: ceasefire agreements that lack independent enforcement and rely on the parties themselves to maintain compliance are fragile by design.

What Comes Next

The three-week ceasefire extension runs through mid-May. Second-stage negotiations scheduled for May 14-15 in Washington aim to "build a framework for lasting peace" [3]. But the factors working against that outcome are substantial.

UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force that has monitored the Israel-Lebanon border since 2006, is set to withdraw by December 31, 2026, under Resolution 2790 [20]. The UN Secretary-General has been asked to provide options for post-withdrawal monitoring, but no replacement mechanism has been agreed upon [20].

On the ground, Israeli forces retain control over border areas and continue to issue evacuation orders for Lebanese towns [3]. Hezbollah has increased its operational tempo. The death toll climbs daily. The humanitarian funding gap grows.

The ceasefire is not formally dead. But the distinction between a ceasefire that is technically in effect and one that is actually observed has become, for the people of southern Lebanon, largely academic.