DUBAI: Satellite imagery obtained by Arab News has revealed the extent of damage to Lebanon’s Beaufort Ridge after the Israeli military said it used hundreds of tons of explosives to destroy an underground Hezbollah tunnel network in the area in late July.
Images taken before and after the operation announced by the IDF on the 31st of July show significant destruction, land clearing and rubble build up in the land and township of Aroun in the surrounds of the UNESCO World Heritage listed Beaufot castle.
Satellite imagery above Beufort Castle, Copernicus EO 2026.
Built around the 12th century AD, the castle has seen its fair share of military campaigns since its beginnings as a crusader fortress. The castle was occupied by the IDF base from 1982 until 2000 during the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon with its strategic ridgeline coming under fire once more in the latest conflict.
The attack on the castle’s ridgeline was one of the largest operations to take place since a June agreement called for the Lebanese military to deploy to areas of southern Lebanon where Hezbollah previously maintained a military presence, paving the way for Israeli forces to withdraw from the buffer zone they hold inside Lebanon.
Lebanon's Directorate General of Antiquities said in June that the castle had been under its sole administration since Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, and said locations depicted in Israeli maps and videos as military infrastructure were away from the archaeological complex.
UNESCO, which had already expressed alarm over strikes near Beaufort earlier in the conflict, said sites under enhanced protection “benefit from the highest level of legal protection against attack and use for military purposes.”
Wholesale destruction in the South
The destruction visible around Beaufort forms part of a much wider transformation of southern Lebanon that can be observed from space.
Satellite images of Majdal Zoun taken a year apart show a dramatic expansion of cleared and destroyed areas across the town.
Satellite imagery above southern Lebanon Copernicus EO August 7 2026.
Imagery from August 2025 shows extensive damage but numerous structures still standing. By August 2026, large sections visible in the earlier image had been reduced to cleared ground and rubble.
The town has continued to be a flashpoint despite diplomatic efforts to end the conflict. Two Israeli soldiers were killed in an explosion in Majdal Zoun last week, prompting another wave of Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon.A comparison of satellite imagery from August 2026 and 2025 of the Lebanese town of Majdal Zoun, itself a victim of Israeli
Nearly two years on from an Israeli/Hezbollah ceasefire meant to break the cycle of destruction, the village has gone from partially destroyed to being almost completely wiped out.
In July, a group of UN human rights experts said that the pattern of erasure seen in the south echoed Israel’s tactics in Gaza, where it has been accused of Genocide at the International Court of Justice.
Israeli forces still control a “security zone” in the south, with Israel arguing that it needs to retain territory until the threat posed by Hezbollah has been removed. Lebanon, by contrast, has pushed for a full Israeli withdrawal as the Lebanese army expands its authority in the border region.
Satellite imagery above southern Lebanon Copernicus EO 2026.
