Despite a ceasefire being in place since April 16, intense fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has continued, resulting in hundreds of deaths and widespread destruction across Lebanon.
Mounting evidence points not only to consistent breaches of the ceasefire by Israel, but to an escalation of violence, particularly in the south. Where Israel has concentrated its efforts to reduce more southern villages to rubble. Our analysis also found that nearly 270 demolitions using heavy machinery or controlled explosions by Israel were carried out after the ceasefire began, and more than doubled after April 16.
The National has analysed data from the monitoring group, Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, and Lebanon's Ministry of Public Health.
Here is what the data shows.
Killings have not stopped
The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health's last bulletin before the ceasefire took effect revealed 2,294 people had been killed and 7,544 wounded since the escalation began on March 2. Among those killed were 177 children and 100 medics; another 704 children were among the wounded.
By May 12, 25 days into the ceasefire, 2,882 people had been killed since the start of the war, including 200 children, and 8,768 had been wounded, including 797 children. A total of 108 medics were among those killed.
That is a total of 673 deaths during the ceasefire, an average of 27 a day, including 23 children and eight medics. The figures will likely have risen again by the time this article is published.
Air strikes didn't stop, and ground offensives increased
ACLED's event-level tracking shows the same pattern from a different angle: incidents have not stopped, but they have geographically narrowed towards southern Lebanon.
After the ceasefire was announced on April 16, the number of large-scale air strikes decreased, but ground offensives continued.
ACLED recorded 45 ground attacks by Israel on Lebanese territory on March 17, the highest single-day total since the start of the war. On May 3, 31 ground incidents were recorded inside Lebanese territory, the highest number to date.
The bulk of recorded attacks since April 17 has concentrated on a band of villages along the southern border and inside what Israel now calls the "Yellow Line," a 10-kilometre strip of Lebanese territory that the Israeli army says it does not intend to vacate "for the coming months and maybe years".
The Lebanese Army has logged Israeli breaches almost daily, and Hezbollah has acknowledged its own retaliatory operations. In one 24-hour period in early May, it claimed 24 attacks on Israeli positions, soldiers and vehicles in southern Lebanon.
The UN's monitoring of Israeli attacks on Lebanon puts the current pattern in context. Before the latest escalation began in March, UNIFIL had documented more than 10,000 Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace and roughly 1,400 ground incursions between the November 2024 ceasefire and the end of February 2026, resulting in 400 deaths and more than 1,100 injuries. UNIFIL's mandate is due to expire on December 31, removing the only systematic international monitor on the line.
From April 16 to May 8, air strikes on Lebanese territory totalled 760.
Displacement remained constant
UNHCR and IOM's Displacement Tracking Matrix recorded 141,613 people sheltering in 690 collective sites at the moment the truce took hold on April 16, against a wider displaced population estimated at more than 1.1 million, including 390,000 children.
In the first four days of the ceasefire, the shelter population fell by 21 per cent, to 117,421 across 631 sites, as families left collective shelters in their tens of thousands. But the breakdown of where they went tells us more about the lack of shelters and informal housing.
In Baalbek Hermel, in the eastern Bekaa Valley, the shelter population fell by 85 per cent in four days; in the Bekaa governorate, it fell by 56 per cent. In Nabatieh, Akkar and north Lebanon, the governorates closest to the fighting and to the destroyed villages, shelter populations barely moved.
Beirut, alone among Lebanon's governorates, saw its shelter population rise as IDPs from far-flung displacement sites began moving back towards their homes in the south and were absorbed into the capital. OCHA called this "secondary displacement"; the 21 per cent drop was lateral movement, not a return.
Despite the decrease in officially registered IDPs at the start of the ceasefire, there was a quick rebound. Shelter populations were rising from 121,225 across 642 sites on April 23 to more than 124,000 across 625 sites on May 4.
Families are leaving formal shelters, but they are not going home. OCHA reports that around 90 per cent of all displaced people are now outside formal shelters altogether, in rented rooms, with host families, or in informal arrangements.
Fresh displacement orders have continued to be issued during the ceasefire. On May 4, the Israeli army announced displacement orders for 11 villages and towns in Nabatieh governorate, followed by air strikes that triggered new flows. On May 11, the village of Sohmor in the Bekaa governorate was placed under overnight displacement orders before air strikes destroyed several buildings the next morning. Throughout this period, Israel warned people not to return to 74 localities in southern Lebanon, OCHA recorded.
The cost of damage has increased
The UN's $308.3 million flash appeal for Lebanon, which was meant to carry the response from March through to May, is only 38 per cent funded, leaving roughly $191 million short as humanitarian needs deepen.
The World Bank's last full assessment, completed before the March 2026 escalation, put Lebanon's recovery and reconstruction bill at $11 billion, with $4.76 billion concentrated in the southern governorates of Nabatieh and the south.
What Israel says
Israel says it retains the right to act against "imminent or continuing threats" and that its presence inside the Yellow Line is defensive. Hezbollah, which was a principal combatant during the escalation but not a signatory to the truce, says its operations are responses to the continuing violations from Israel.
But Israel continues to double down on claims that Hezbollah repeatedly violates the ceasefire.
On May 14, the Israeli foreign ministry tweeted, claiming that Hezbollah had launched an explosive drone from Lebanon into Israeli territory, saying this attack was ‘yet another blatant ceasefire violation’.
The data do not adjudicate that dispute. What it does show is that one month on, Israel has shown little sign of slowing down its military offensive into Lebanon, where more than 670 people have been killed, more than a million people remain displaced, and an Israeli military presence is expanding.
