Israeli troops captured Beaufort Castle near Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon after days of intense fighting and airstrikes in nearby villages, marking a fresh advance in a war that has already redrawn parts of the front. The army’s Arabic spokesman, Avichay Adraee, posted a photograph on X showing troops walking outside the castle, while Defense Minister Israel Katz said they had raised an Israeli flag over the site.
The capture is being watched now because Beaufort Castle sits in one of the most sensitive stretches of southern Lebanon, and Israeli forces have pushed farther across the Litani River as they widen operations. Katz said the troops had returned to the summit of Beaufort and raised the flag there, a line that framed the move as both military and symbolic. For residents in villages around Nabatiyeh, it means another round of shelling and gunfire that has not stopped even as the fighting has dragged on for months.
Beaufort Castle is a Crusader-built fortress on a mountain, and it has changed hands before. Israeli troops first captured it in 1982 and held it until they withdrew from Lebanon in 2000. This time, the advance came despite a nominal ceasefire that has been in place since April, underscoring how far the conflict has drifted from any stable pause.
The breach matters because it is being described as Israel’s deepest incursion into Lebanon in more than 26 years. Israel has already designated the area from the Litani River up to the Zahrani River as a combat zone, widening the military map as it presses into territory where Hezbollah fighters remain active. Hezbollah said overnight that it carried out two attacks targeting Israeli troops and a Merkava tank near Bayada, in the southwest near the border, a reminder that control of high ground does not end the fighting below it.
The human cost has kept climbing alongside the territorial push. The Lebanese Health Ministry said 3,371 people have been killed in the country since March, while the Israeli army said one of its soldiers died the previous day after a Hezbollah explosive drone strike in southern Lebanon, bringing Israeli military deaths since early March to 25. Nawaf Salam accused Israel on Saturday of pursuing a scorched-earth policy, and the language captures how the campaign is being read in Beirut as the destruction spreads beyond one castle or one village.
What comes next is narrower than the battlefield but no less important: talks were set for 2 and 3 June at the US State Department, and it is not clear whether the capture of Beaufort Castle will alter the agenda. For now, the flag on the summit is the sharpest sign that the war in southern Lebanon is still moving, not pausing.
