• The US says Lebanon and Israel have agreed on the structure and guidelines for a limited Israeli troop withdrawal from southern Lebanon following talks in Rome.

Israel returns body of missing Lebanese soldier

The Israeli military has returned the body of Lebanese Presidential Guard Patrick Bakarian months after he went missing, Lebanon’s L’Orient-Le Jour newspaper has reported.

Bakarian’s remains were handed over by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Wednesday, L’Orient-Le Jour said, citing a statement from the Lebanese army.

Bakarian had been missing since he was targeted inside his vehicle by Israeli forces on April 19.

‘Lebanese army does not want to work directly with the Israelis’

The talks [between Israel and Lebanon in Rome] are historic. But the outcome – still a bit unclear.

This is the sixth round of negotiations between Lebanon and Israel mediated by the United States.

The Lebanese president told his delegation before they took off to Rome that they should be discussing the immediate Israeli withdrawal from the pilot zone before anything else. On Wednesday, he was making positive noises, saying that the Americans were listening to them.

The Israelis for their part, say that the pilot zones have been agreed upon and that there is a desire to implement them quickly, echoing what a US State Department said – that the talks were fruitful and the framework agreement and the pilot zones would be implemented in the coming days.

These pilot zones are areas where the Israeli military is supposed to withdraw. The Lebanese army then deploys and frees the area of Hezbollah weapons.

But there are two problems.

Firstly, the zones currently being discussed are not really under Israeli control. Their troops are not present on the ground. Instead, they’re controlling these areas from the air with fire.

Secondly, they are reportedly demanding to be directly involved in verifying afterwards that the Lebanese army really has cleared these areas. The Lebanese army doesn’t want to work directly with the Israelis. Now that has spurred concern for many in Lebanon. They fear that any kind of hiccup could delay the withdrawal or that it doesn’t happen at all.

Lebanon calls for end to Israel’s occupation

Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Youssef Raggi has said that the goal of the country’s armed forces is to “gradually extend their authority over all Lebanese territory, including the south”, according to the National News Agency (NNA),

Speaking at a conference held by the French Senate in Paris, he said achieving this objective remains contingent upon a complete Israeli withdrawal from all Lebanese territory.

“No state can complete the building of its institutions and sovereignty while part of its territory remains under occupation. Occupation undermines state institutions, fuels tensions, delays the return to political and security stability, and prevents the state from exercising its full authority over its territory,” Raggi said.

The minister also said that the decision to end Hezbollah’s military presence was not “a response to external pressures, nor the fruit of diplomatic negotiations, but rather an expression of a pure national will”.

Israel tells Pentagon chief it will keep troops in occupied ‘security zones’

Defense Minister Israel Katz has told his US counterpart Pete Hegseth that Israel is determined to keep forces in “security zones” carved out inside Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip.

In a statement, Katz’s office said the two men spoke overnight and the minister “emphasised Israel’s determination to remain in the security zones in Syria, Gaza and Lebanon in order to protect Israel’s borders and communities”.

The conversation comes despite a US official saying the staunch allies made progress on a plan for Israel to withdraw from “pilot zones” in southern Lebanon, following two-day US-mediated diplomatic talks between Lebanon and Israel in Italy that ended on Wednesday.

Under international humanitarian law (IHL), these combined actions constitute severe violations and, in many cases, war crimes. The legal framework strictly regulates both the displacement of civilians and the destruction of territory during an invasion and belligerent occupation.

• Prohibition of Mass Transfer: see Article 9
• The legality of evacuations: read rights of displaced people
• War crime classifications: the use of unlawful mass "evacuation" and no-return orders to systematically depopulate swaths of Lebanon equates to the war crime of unlawful transfer and forced displacement.
• Wanton destruction: read Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
• Imperative military necessity: the Israeli war belligerent has never proven that destruction of whole villages, towns, and cities where of military necessity when looking at the mass displacement of civilians with no right to return.
• Inadmissibility of territory by force:  The partitioning of a sovereign state or the creation of permanent "buffer zones" to unilaterally alter international borders flagrantly violates the UN Charter, which strictly outlaws the acquisition of territory by force.

‘Ending Hezbollah’s military arm a sovereign Lebanese decision’

Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Youssef Raggi says there will be no “duality of authority” in the country any more, apparently referring to the decision to disarm Hezbollah.

“There is now no longer any place for weapons outside the legitimacy of the state nor for decisions taken outside its institutions,” Raggi said in a speech.

“The decision to end Hezbollah’s military arm is a sovereign Lebanese decision.”

Raggi said the decision preceded the framework agreement reached in the US with Israel and paved the way for “enshrining the fact that decisions of war and peace, as well as foreign policy, now fall exclusively under the responsibility of the Lebanese state”.

The deployment of Lebanon’s army across the entire country “remains inseparable from Israel’s total withdrawal from all the Lebanese territories it still occupies”, he added.

A meeting in Washington, DC, on June 26 produced the agreement that called for an end to Israel’s war on Lebanon and the disarmament of “armed groups” – a reference to Hezbollah.

Israel ‘razing villages to the ground’ in southern Lebanon

The Israeli military has been systematically destroying civilian homes and infrastructure, razing villages to the ground.

We are not far from the area Israel occupies in southern Lebanon – the closest position is less than 1km away. We have been here for about four hours and heard four explosions as Israeli demolitions continue.

In Haddatha, another area in southern Lebanon, homes have been burned. Satellite images confirm widespread damage across the south, which corresponds to about 6 percent of the Lebanese territory.

These homes are people’s lives. They were destroyed when there was supposed to be a ceasefire. Even between the last ceasefire in November 2024 and the latest flare-up in March 2026, daily demolitions by Israel army occurred in the region.

See previously outlined international legal information

Israeli army launches attacks on southern Lebanon

Air strikes have been carried out around the Deir neighbourhood in Nabatieh district despite an ongoing “ceasefire”, according to Lebanon’s official National News Agency.

Israeli warplanes carried out two air strikes on the town, and sounds of explosions were heard, with thick smoke rising from the targeted areas, it said.

Israel and Lebanon reached a framework agreement in June to implement a ceasefire in a US-brokered deal.

‘Large explosion’ reported near Zawtar al-Gharbiyah in southern Lebanon

Israeli forces “carried out a large explosion operation” near the town of Zawtar al-Gharbiyah in southern Lebanon, Lebanon’s NNA is reporting.

Lebanese and Israeli officials met in Rome this week, focusing on a plan to establish “pilot zones” in southern Lebanon from which Israeli forces would begin withdrawing.

The two-day diplomatic talks in Rome ended on Wednesday, with a US official calling the meetings “productive and positive”.

UN says Israeli military still firing projectiles in southern Lebanon

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric has said that UN peacekeepers continue to observe Israeli military fire in southern Lebanon, despite a ceasefire there.

The UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, recorded “thirteen trajectories of projectiles attributed to the [Israeli military]” this morning, Dujarric said.

It also recorded six trajectories yesterday and 13 on Tuesday, all attributed to Israeli forces, he said.

“Since 21 June, UNIFIL has not detected any trajectories originating from non-state actors, including Hezbollah,” Dujarric added.

Separately, the Israeli military said just after midnight local time on Friday (21:00 GMT Thursday) that air raid sirens that sounded in northern Israel’s Kiryat Shmona were “false alarms” activated in an area where Israeli forces “operate in southern Lebanon”.