BEIRUT – Lebanon has suffered the deadliest spillover effect of a regional war sparked by a U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran more than three months ago that will end with a deal between Washington and Tehran.
The conflict spread to Lebanon on March 2, when Iran-backed Hezbollah opened fire on Israel in support of Tehran, triggering Israeli air and ground attacks.
Here are some of the main costs in Lebanon.
casualties
According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, from March 2 to June 14, the night the US-Iran agreement was announced, at least 3,783 people died and 11,699 were injured in Lebanon. The death toll included 247 children, 363 women and 133 health care workers. The ministry’s data did not distinguish between civilians and combatants, and Hezbollah did not disclose how many combatants were killed.
This number exceeds the 3,468 people who died in Iran as of the end of April when the US-Iran ceasefire agreement was reached.
This number is also higher than during the last conflict between Israel and Hezbollah (October 2023 to November 2024). That war killed 3,768 people, the vast majority of whom were killed after Israel launched its offensive in September 2024.
At least 28 Israeli soldiers were killed in Lebanon during the latest war, while four civilians were killed in Hezbollah attacks, according to a Reuters tally of Israeli military bulletins. By comparison, there are 73 Israeli soldiers and 45 civilians in northern Israel during the 2023-2024 war.
destroy
Israeli airstrikes have damaged and destroyed buildings across Lebanon. Most of the damage was concentrated in the south, but buildings in the capital and its southern suburbs were also destroyed.
Israeli forces occupying the southern part of the country have also razed dozens of villages there, saying they aim to keep residents of northern Israel safe from attacks by Hezbollah militants embedded in civilian areas.
Damaged buildings in the south during the first month of the war included hospitals, power stations, and water pumping stations.
The latest data from Lebanon’s National Council for Scientific Research between March 2 and May 17 shows that more than 68,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed across the country. Nearly 30,000 of these units are located in Lebanon’s three southernmost districts, and more than 8,000 units are located in Beirut and its southern suburbs.
The United Nations Development Program said in a report released this month that damage in Beirut and the southern suburbs alone amounted to $365 million.
Israel’s actions of destroying buildings and causing casualties have drawn criticism from US President Donald Trump.
“You don’t have to tear down apartments every time you look for someone, because there are a lot of people in those apartments, and I can tell you, they’re not all Hezbollah,” Trump told reporters at the G7 summit in France.
Displacement
According to Lebanese authorities, more than 1.2 million people have been displaced since March 2 by Israeli airstrikes and evacuation warnings across Lebanon.
They include hundreds of thousands who fled Beirut’s southern suburbs, the first time the Israeli military has ordered a complete evacuation of Beirut’s southern suburbs during the war.
Even after the U.S.-Iran deal was announced, many displaced people did not return home, either because they were homeless or because they were skeptical that the ceasefire in Lebanon would last.
economic impact
Lebanese authorities have yet to assess the full scale of the war’s economic impact but say it has derailed the country’s recovery from a series of recent crises, including the 2023-2024 war, the 2020 Beirut port explosion and the 2019 financial collapse.
Finance Minister Yassine Jaber told Reuters in May that the war could cause Lebanon’s economy to shrink by at least 7% this year.
According to the World Bank, the war in 2024 caused at least $8.5 billion in material and economic losses to Lebanon. The World Bank stated that Lebanon’s real GDP will shrink by 7.1% in 2024, resulting in a cumulative GDP decline of nearly 40% since 2019.
This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
