Louay Faour
The New Arab / July 31, 2026
Overnight Israeli detonations along southern Lebanon’s Beaufort ridge triggered tremors and left visible damage to the surrounding terrain.
The Israeli military Thursday night carried out large detonations around an historic Crusader-era castle in southern Lebanon recently added to the UNESCO list of sites in danger.
A joint statement from the Israeli prime minister and defence minister said the military used 700 tonnes of explosives to destroy alleged tunnels beneath the Beaufort ridge, claiming that these tunnels belonged to the Hezbollah militant group.
Footage shared online showed the aftermath of the detonations with visible damage to the terrain.
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Israeli forces captured in late May the Beaufort Castle, a strategic site that offers a commanding view over southern Lebanon and parts of northern Israel. While the castle itself remains intact with no reports of significant damage, continued Israeli control and explosions pose a serious risk to the medieval fortress.
Earlier this month, a UNESCO committee decided to place Beaufort and several other castles and cities in southern Lebanon on both the World Heritage List and the List of World Heritage in Danger after reviewing nominations on an emergency basis.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry took objection to efforts to list Beaufort Castle as a World Heritage site, claiming that Hezbollah had built a vast tunnel complex beneath the site.
Lebanon’s Culture Ministry said the castle – known in Arabic as Shqif – had not been destroyed by the explosions but stressed that the extent of any damage could only be determined through on-site inspection.
In a statement, the ministry said that Israel’s occupation is preventing specialised technical teams from accessing the area to conduct an assessment. It added that the castle has enjoyed enhanced protection since 2024 under the Second Protocol to the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
Separately, the National Centre for Geophysics, part of Lebanon’s National Council for Scientific Research, said on X that all its seismic stations recorded ground waves at 12:02 a.m. on Friday generated by the Israeli explosion in the Beaufort area.
The centre said the blast was equivalent to a 3.8-magnitude earthquake on the Richter scale. Similar explosions attributed to alleged Hezbollah underground infrastructure have repeatedly shaken southern Lebanon in recent months, visibly altering the landscape in the area.
Since the conflict with Hezbollah began in October 2023, and particularly since Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon a year later, several heritage sites in the south have been damaged or destroyed in Israeli attacks.
According to the latest figures from Lebanon’s Health Ministry, 4,333 people have been killed in Israeli strikes since fighting resumed on 2 March.
Violence has eased significantly since Israel and Lebanon signed a US-sponsored framework agreement in June. A truce was initially reached in April and has since been extended multiple times.
UNIFIL finds ammonium nitrate
The UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon announced on Tuesday that it had discovered around for four tonnes of highly explosive ammonium nitrate in the border village of Houla earlier this month.
Israel currently occupies large parts of southern Lebanon in an area it dubs the “Yellow Line,” spanning the entire border and several kilometres deep in Lebanese territory.
Dozens of towns and villages have been flattened, and more towns have seen extensive damage, in a scorched-earth policy being implemented by Israel since 2024.
In a statement, UNIFIL said peacekeepers found 385 abandoned containers inside a building during a routine inspection on 2 July. The containers held around 4,000 kilograms of explosive material, consisting mainly of ammonium nitrate compounds.
The mission said its explosive ordnance disposal specialists carried out controlled operations after conducting a thorough risk assessment, neutralising the material and eliminating the danger it posed.
According to media reports, the ammonium nitrate containers bore “Hebrew writing,” suggesting they had been used in demolition operations carried out by Israel.
In recent years, ammonium nitrate has become closely associated with the August 2020 Beirut Port explosion, which was caused by the detonation of hundreds of tonnes of the improperly stored chemical, killing more than 200 people and wounding thousands.
Louay Faour is a journalist at The New Arab focusing largely on the Levant, with a particular interest in Lebanese affairs
