Lebanese media report giant traffic jams on the coastal highway heading south as thousands of residents of southern Lebanon return to their homes following the announced agreement. Despite no official IDF announcement permitting return, airstrikes in the south have effectively ceased.
Lebanese media are reporting massive traffic jams on the coastal highway heading south this Monday morning, as thousands of residents from southern Lebanon return to their homes after the announced memorandum of understanding. The reports note that while the IDF has not yet officially declared the area safe for return, airstrikes in southern Lebanon have effectively ceased since Sunday night, as The Zioneer reported at 08:22 Jerusalem.
This development follows a sequence of reports from earlier today. At 07:59 Jerusalem, The Zioneer published initial accounts of a bulldozer clearing rubble in a southern village as residents returned, alongside unverified local claims that IDF troops remained in the area. That same minute, a separate bulletin cited analyst Yossi Eliezer reporting that the mass movement was following an Iranian directive — a claim that remained unconfirmed by official sources. By 09:21, Lebanese army sources told Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed that residents had begun returning to border towns, providing the first on-record military confirmation of the return movement.
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri — who leads the Shiite Amal movement — thanked Iran and the United States for including in the MOU a clause requiring an end to what he termed "Israeli aggression" against Lebanon, as The Zioneer reported at 10:43 Jerusalem. He also expressed gratitude to Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt for their efforts. The return movement follows an extended period of military operations in the south, during which the IDF continued strikes there despite earlier diplomatic signals — though the aerial campaign has been observed declining since Friday, as reported at 15:59 Jerusalem on Friday, June 12.
It remains unconfirmed whether the IDF has issued any official declaration permitting the return of residents south of the Litani. The initial reports of an Iranian directive have not been corroborated by Lebanese or Israeli official sources, and it is unclear whether the reported IDF presence in the area has been fully withdrawn in accordance with the ceasefire understandings.
5 developments
- StrongReports: Traffic congestion on roads south of Sidon as Lebanese residents return home
- DevelopingSouthern Lebanon residents return to widespread destruction in Hezbollah strongholds
- DevelopingHundreds of thousands of displaced southern Lebanese return home, Reuters reports
- StrongLebanese sources publish footage of residents — including Hezbollah operatives — streaming south to return to homes
Source and signal
- Open-source intake