MAYS AL-JABAL, Lebanon (AP) — Israeli forces in southern Lebanon on Sunday opened fire on protesters demanding their withdrawal in line with a ceasefire agreement, killing at least 15 and injuring more than 80, Lebanese health officials reported.

The dead included two women and a Lebanese army soldier, the Health Ministry said in a statement. People were reported wounded in more than a dozen villages in the border area.

Demonstrators, some of them carrying Hezbollah flags, attempted to enter several villages to protest Israel’s failure to withdraw from southern Lebanon by the 60-day deadline stipulated in a ceasefire agreement that halted the Israel-Hezbollah war in late November.

Israel has said that it needs to stay longer because the Lebanese army has not deployed to all areas of southern Lebanon to ensure that Hezbollah does not reestablish its presence in the area. The Lebanese army has said it cannot deploy until Israeli forces withdraw.

The Israeli army blamed Hezbollah for stirring up Sunday’s protests.

It said in a statement that its troops fired warning shots to “remove threats in a number of areas where suspects were identified approaching.” It added that a number of suspects in proximity to Israeli troops were apprehended and were being questioned.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said in a statement addressing the people of southern Lebanon on Sunday that “Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are non-negotiable, and I am following up on this issue at the highest levels to ensure your rights and dignity.”

He urged them to “exercise self-restraint and trust in the Lebanese Armed Forces.” The Lebanese army, in a separate statement, said it was escorting civilians into some towns in the border area and called on residents to follow military instructions to ensure their safety.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, whose Amal Movement party is allied with Hezbollah and who served as an interlocutor between the militant group and the U.S. during ceasefire negotiations, said that Sunday’s bloodshed “is a clear and urgent call for the international community to act immediately and compel Israel to withdraw from occupied Lebanese territories.”

An Arabic-language spokesperson for the Israeli military, Avichay Adraee, posted on X that Hezbollah had sent “rioters” and is “trying to heat up the situation to cover up its situation and status in Lebanon and the Arab world.”

He called Sunday morning for residents of the border area not to attempt to return to their villages.

U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert and the head of mission of the U.N. peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL, Lt. Gen. Aroldo Lázaro, called in a joint statement for both Israel and Lebanon to comply with their obligations under the ceasefire agreement.

“The fact is that the timelines envisaged in the November Understanding have not been met,” the statement said. “As seen tragically this morning, conditions are not yet in place for the safe return of citizens to their villages along the Blue Line.”

UNIFIL said that further violence risks undermining the fragile security situation in the area and “prospects for stability ushered in by the cessation of hostilities and the formation of a government in Lebanon.”

It called for the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops, the removal of unauthorized weapons and assets south of the Litani River, the redeployment of the Lebanese army in all of south Lebanon and ensuring the safe and dignified return of displaced civilians on both sides of the Blue Line.

An AP team was stranded overnight at a UNIFIL base near Mays al-Jabal after the Israeli army erected roadblocks Saturday while they were joining a patrol by peacekeepers. The journalists reported hearing gunshots and booming sounds Sunday morning from the base, and peacekeepers said that dozens of protesters had gathered nearby.

In the village of Aita al Shaab, families wandered over flattened concrete structures looking for remnants of the homes they left behind. No Israeli forces were present.

“These are our houses,” said Hussein Bajouk, one of the returning residents. “However much they destroy, we will rebuild.”

Bajouk added that he is convinced that former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs in September, is really still alive.

“I don’t know how much we’re going to wait, another month or two months… but the Sayyed will come out and speak,” he said using an honorific for Nasrallah.

On the other side of the border in the kibbutz of Manara, Orna Weinberg surveyed the devastation of the recent conflict on her neighbors and the Lebanese villages on the other side of the frontier. The sound of gunfire sporadically popped in the distance.

“Unfortunately, we have no way of defending our own children without harming their children,” Weinberg, 58, said. “It’s a tragedy to all sides.”

Some 112,000 Lebanese remain displaced, out of over 1 million who fled their homes during the war.

Sewell reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut, Bilal Hussein in Aita al-Shaab, Lebanon, and Sam McNeil in Manara, Israel, contributed to this report.

BEIRUT (AP) — Israel on Thursday carried out its first airstrike on Lebanon since a truce with Hezbollah announced this week, saying it targeted the militant group’s activity at a rocket storage facility in southern Lebanon that breached the ceasefire.

Lebanese authorities reported scattered incidents of Israeli mortar attacks, strikes and shots fired that wounded two people trying to return to southern Lebanon. Lebanon’s state-run media said the wounded were civilians, while the Israeli military described them as suspects who violated the terms of the truce that ended more than a year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

The bursts of violence — with no reports of serious casualties — reflected the uneasy nature of the ceasefire that otherwise appeared to hold Thursday as Lebanese troops began to deploy in parts of southern Lebanon, the eastern Bekaa Valley and the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Hezbollah has based its operations.

The Lebanese military said it was setting up temporary checkpoints and detonating unexploded ordnance in hopes of helping displaced civilians return to their homes.

Some 1.2 million people were displaced in Lebanon during the country’s deadliest war in decades. Thousands of residents, their cars stacked high with mattresses and full of belongings, began to make the odyssey back to their war-ravaged towns on Wednesday, after the ceasefire took effect.

But their movements remain constrained. The Lebanese and Israeli militaries have ordered civilians displaced from border communities to steer clear of areas where Israeli troops are still in position.

On Thursday, the Israeli military said its troops opened fire at “several suspects” who arrived in their vehicles to certain parts of southern Lebanon in violation of the truce. The statement did not give further details.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Israeli fire wounded two civilians in Markaba, a village close to the border that has been a scene of intense fighting over the past 14 months. It also reported Israeli tank fire hitting some villages and farms in the south, causing no casualties.

Col. Avichay Adraee, an Arabic language spokesman for the Israeli military, announced that a nighttime curfew for Lebanese residents south of the Litani River remained in effect, banning movement from 5 p.m. Thursday until 7 a.m. Friday.

The Lebanese army accused Israel of breaking the ceasefire several times on Thursday by conducting strikes on Lebanon with “various weapons” and continuing to patrol and surveil Lebanese skies with warplanes and drones. The army said it was “following up on these violations in coordination with the relevant authorities,” without elaborating.

An Associated Press reporter in northern Israel heard Israeli drones buzzing and the sporadic crackle of machine-gun fire across the border in Lebanon.

Hezbollah has not issued any public statements on the alleged Israeli ceasefire violations but Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah acknowledged the incidents. When asked by reporters how Hezbollah would respond, he was cautious.

“We don’t want to rush things,” he said, adding that Hezbollah “has the right to self-defense.”

The truce between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah, brokered by the United States and France, calls for an initial two-month ceasefire in which the militants are to withdraw north of the Litani River and Israeli forces are to return to their side of the border.

Under the terms of the agreement, Lebanese troops will gradually deploy further the south as Israeli troops pull out, said a Lebanese military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media.

The buffer zone would be patrolled by U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanese troops, which have not been a party to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Lebanon’s military on Thursday shared photos showing troops clearing roads of destroyed vehicles, crushed houses and unexploded bombs.

For many Lebanese, the pause in fighting brought relief — but also heartache. Displaced families returned home to sift through the bombed-out ruins of their shops and apartments.

Drone footage of Qana in southern Lebanon, taken Thursday, shows ghostly, battered neighborhoods with smashed homes and giant craters gouged into the ground — the scale of destruction chilling in a town that has become synonymous with the killing of civilians in past wars.

During Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah, an Israeli strike on a residential building killed 27 civilians, a third of them children, according to U.N. figures. During its 1996 offensive, Israeli artillery shelling on a United Nations compound housing hundreds of displaced people in Qana killed at least 100 civilians and wounded scores more people.

“We are a town of martyrs,” said Aref AbouKhalil, a 29-year-old taxi driver who checked on his ruined family home in Qana on Thursday. Those who lost family and friends in the Israeli bombardment of Qana over the past year, he said, felt the grief of 2006 and 1996 all over again.

“They’re determined to destroy us, they keep trying, and now the town is destroyed,” he said of Israeli strikes. “But we’ll build it again.”

Israel says it plans to withdraw its forces, but only as it ensures Hezbollah observes the agreement.

“Any deviation from this agreement will be enforced with fire,” said Lt. Gen. Herzl Halevi, the Israeli military’s chief of staff. “We are now moving toward new phase, where the same determination that brought us to this agreement will be applied in enforcement.”

Of the 50,000 people who fled northern Israeli border communities because of constant Hezbollah attacks, Halevi said that ensuring their swift return was “our duty to them, and our duty to ourselves.”

A rare quiet, compared to recent months, fell over the border towns Thursday. There were air raid sirens warning of incoming Hezbollah rockets, no deafening explosions shaking the ground.

But with the towns largely deserted and residents relocated, Halevi’s remarks signaled the military was not encouraging Israelis to return just yet.

In Menara, an Israeli community on the border with views into Lebanon, around three quarters of homes are damaged, some with collapsed roofs and burnt-out interiors. A few residents could be seen gathering their belongings there on Thursday before leaving again.

Despite the smattering of attacks, the clearest sign of the truce Thursday was a reduction in the overall level of violence in Lebanon since the conflict began a day after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 assault out of Gaza, when Hezbollah began firing rockets, drones and missiles in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group.

Israel retaliated with airstrikes, and the conflict steadily intensified before becoming an all-out war in mid-September. The war in Gaza is still raging with no end in sight.

More than 3,760 people were killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon during the conflict, many of them civilians, according to Lebanese health officials. The fighting killed more than 70 people in Israel — over half of them civilians — as well as dozens of Israeli soldiers fighting in southern Lebanon.

Frankel reported from Menara, Israel. Associated Press writers Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel, and Isabel DeBre in La Paz, Bolivia, contributed to this report.

JERUSALEM (AP) — For many across the Middle East, the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire came as a relief: the first major sign of progress in the region since war began more than a year ago.

But for Palestinians in Gaza and families of hostages held in the territory, the news appeared only to inaugurate a newer, grimmer period of the conflict there. For them, it marked yet another missed opportunity to end fighting that has stretched on for nearly 14 months.

Palestinians had hoped that any ceasefire deal with Hezbollah would include a truce in Gaza as well. The families of people kidnapped when Hamas-led militants stormed southern Israel in October 2023, meanwhile, wanted part of the agreement to include returning their loved ones. Instead, the ceasefire was confined only to the fighting in Lebanon.

“We feel this is a missed opportunity to tie in the hostages in this agreement that was signed today,” said Ruby Chen, whose son, Itay Chen, was taken hostage from an Israeli military base and has been declared dead.

As much as they were intertwined, the two wars have been very different. In Lebanon, Israel said its aim was to drive Hezbollah back from the countries’ shared border and end the militant group’s barrages into northern Israel. The ceasefire that took effect Wednesday is intended to do that.

In Gaza, Israel’s goals are more sweeping. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been resolute in insisting that Hamas must be completely destroyed and Israel must retain lasting control over parts of the territory. Months of talks have failed to get Netanyahu to back down from those demands — or to convince Hamas to release hostages under those terms.

For Palestinians in Gaza, that means continuing misery under an Israeli campaign that has demolished much of the territory and driven almost the entire population from their homes. Hundreds of thousands are going hungry while living in squalid tent cities as the second winter of the war brings cold rains and flooding.

”They agree to a ceasefire in one place and not in the other? Have mercy on the children, the elderly and the women,” said Ahlam Abu Shalabi, living in tent in central Gaza. “Now it is winter, and all the people are drowning.”

The war between Israel and Hamas began on Oct. 7, 2023, when militants attacked Israel from Gaza, killing around 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostage. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has rained devastation on the Palestinian territory, killing over 44,000 people, according to local health officials. The officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and fighters in their count, say over half of the dead are women and children.

Hezbollah began firing into Israel a day after Hamas’ attack in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group. The two sides have exchanged near-daily barrages since. Moving thousands of troops to its northern border, Israel ramped up bombardment of southern Lebanon and launched a ground invasion there two months ago, killing many of Hezbollah’s leaders.

Palestinians now fear Israel’s military can return its full focus to Gaza — a point that Netanyahu made as he announced the ceasefire in Lebanon on Tuesday.

“The pressure will be more on Gaza,” said Mamdouh Younis, a displaced man in a central Gaza tent camp. Netanyahu, he said, can now exploit the fact that “Gaza has become alone, far from all the arenas that were supporting it, especially the Lebanon front.”

Israeli troops are already engaged in fierce fighting in Gaza’s north, where a two-month offensive has cut off most aid and caused experts to warn a famine may be underway. Strikes all over the territory regularly kill dozens.

In signing onto the ceasefire deal, Hezbollah reversed its long-held position that it wouldn’t stop its barrages across the border unless Israel ends the war in Gaza.

“This could have a psychological impact, as it will further entrench the understanding that Palestinians in Gaza are alone in resisting against their occupiers,” said Tariq Kenney Shawa, a U.S. policy fellow at Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian think tank.

It also leaves Hamas — its capabilities already severely damaged by Israel’s offensive — to fight alone. Hamas official Osama Hamdan appeared to accept Hezbollah’s new position in an interview Monday.

“Any announcement of a ceasefire is welcome. Hezbollah has stood by our people and made significant sacrifices,” Hamdan told the Lebanese broadcaster Al-Mayadeen, which is seen as politically allied with Hezbollah.

Khalil Sayegh, a Palestinian analyst, said the ceasefire could make Hamas even less popular in Gaza, by proving the failure of its gambit that its attack on Israel would rally other militant groups to the fight.

“It’s a moment where we can see the Hamas messaging become weaker and weaker, as they struggle to justify their strategy to the public,” said Sayegh.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire could help force Hamas to the negotiating table because it would show the group that the “cavalry is not on the way.”

But Hamas experts predicted that it would only dig in both on the battlefield and in talks. Hamas has insisted it will only release all the hostages in return for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

“I expect Hamas will continue using guerrilla warfare to confront Israeli forces in Gaza as long as they remain,” said Shawa.

Dozens of Israelis thronged a major highway in Tel Aviv on Tuesday night, protesting for the return of the hostages as the country waited to hear if a ceasefire in Lebanon had been agreed.

Around 100 people taken hostage are still held in Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead. Most of the other hostages seized by Hamas were released during a ceasefire last year.

Ricardo Grichener, the uncle of 23-year-old hostage Omer Wenkert, said the ceasefire with Hezbollah showed how the Israeli government was openly disregarding the hostages.

Even though Israel has inflicted greater damage on Hamas in Gaza than on Hezbollah in Lebanon, he said “the decision to postpone a deal in Gaza and release the hostages is not based on the same military success criteria.”

The most recent effort to wind down the war stalled in October. U.S. President Joe Biden said Tuesday he would begin a renewed push, but his administration is now in its waning days after the reelection of former President Donald Trump.

“This ceasefire doesn’t concern our hostages. I believe that Netanyahu forgot about them, and he just wants to keep fighting in Gaza,” said Ifat Kalderon, clutching a photo of her cousin, Ofer Kalderon, who is a hostage and a father to four.

“Ofer yesterday had his 54th birthday. His second birthday in Gaza,” she said. “It’s unbelievable that he’s still there.”

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel and Lebanon-based Hezbollah militants began a ceasefire Wednesday in a major step toward ending nearly 14 months of fighting as a region on edge wondered whether it will hold.

Some celebratory gunshots could be heard in parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs, battered over the past two months, but no immediate violations of the ceasefire were reported.

Israel has said it will attack if Hezbollah breaks the agreement, and an Israeli military spokesman, in an Arabic-language X post in the first half-hour of the ceasefire, warned evacuated residents of southern Lebanon to not head home yet, saying the military remained deployed there.

The ceasefire calls for an initial two-month halt to fighting and requires Hezbollah to end its armed presence in southern Lebanon, while Israeli troops are to return to their side of the border. Thousands of additional Lebanese troopsand U.N. peacekeepers would deploy in the south, and an international panel headed by the United States would monitor compliance.

The ceasefire began at 4 a.m. Wednesday, a day after Israel carried out its most intense wave of airstrikes in Beirut since the start of the conflict that in recent weeks turned into all-out war. At least 42 people were killed in strikes across the country, according to local authorities.

The ceasefire does not address the devastating war in Gaza, where Hamas is still holding dozens of hostages and the conflict is more intractable.

There appeared to be lingering disagreement over whether Israel would have the right to strike Hezbollah if it believed the militants had violated the agreement, something Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted was part of the deal but which Lebanese and Hezbollah officials have rejected.

Israel’s security Cabinet approved the U.S.-France-brokered ceasefire agreement after Netanyahu presented it, his office said. President Joe Biden, speaking in Washington, called the agreement “good news” and said his administration would make a renewed push for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The Biden administration spent much of this year trying to broker a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza but the talks repeatedly sputtered to a halt. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to bring peace to the Middle East without saying how, and his team linked the deal to Trump’s looming return to office.

Any halt to the fighting in Lebanon is expected to reduce the likelihood of war between Israel and Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and Hamas and exchanged direct fire with Israel on two occasions earlier this year.

Netanyahu presented the ceasefire proposal to Cabinet ministers after a televised address in which he listed accomplishments against Israel’s enemies. He said a ceasefire with Hezbollah would further isolate Hamas in Gaza and allow Israel to focus on its main enemy, Iran.

“If Hezbollah breaks the agreement and tries to rearm, we will attack,” he said. “For every violation, we will attack with might.”

Biden said Israel reserved the right to quickly resume operations in Lebanon if Hezbollah breaks the terms of the truce, but that the deal “was designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities.”

Netanyahu’s office said Israel appreciated the U.S. efforts in securing the deal but “reserves the right to act against every threat to its security.”

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati welcomed the ceasefire and described it as a crucial step toward stability and the return of displaced people.

Hezbollah has said it accepts the proposal, but a senior official with the group said Tuesday it had not seen the agreement in its final form.

“After reviewing the agreement signed by the enemy government, we will see if there is a match between what we stated and what was agreed upon by the Lebanese officials,” Mahmoud Qamati, deputy chair of Hezbollah’s political council, told the Al Jazeera news network.

“We want an end to the aggression, of course, but not at the expense of the sovereignty of the state,” he said, referring to Israel’s demand for freedom of action. “Any violation of sovereignty is refused.”

Even as ceasefire efforts gained momentum in recent days, Israel continued to strike what it called Hezbollah targets across Lebanon while the militants fired rockets, missiles and drones across the border.

An Israeli strike on Tuesday leveled a residential building in central Beirut — the second time in recent days warplanes have hit the crowded area near downtown. At least seven people were killed and 37 wounded, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

Israel also struck a building in Beirut’s bustling commercial district of Hamra for the first time, hitting a site around 400 meters (yards) from Lebanon’s Central Bank. There were no reports of casualties.

The Israeli military said it struck targets linked to Hezbollah’s financial arm.

The evacuation warnings covered many areas, including parts of Beirut that previously were not targeted. Residents fled. Traffic was gridlocked, with mattresses tied to some cars. Dozens of people, some wearing pajamas, gathered in a central square, huddling under blankets or standing around fires as Israeli drones buzzed overhead.

Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee issued evacuation warnings for 20 buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a major presence, as well as a warning for the southern town of Naqoura where the U.N. peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL, is headquartered.

UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said peacekeepers will not evacuate.

The Israeli military also said its ground troops clashed with Hezbollah forces and destroyed rocket launchers in the Slouqi area on the eastern end of the Litani River, a few kilometers (miles) from the Israeli border.

Under the ceasefire deal, Hezbollah is required to move its forces north of the Litani, which in some places is about 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of the border.

Hezbollah began firing into northern Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, saying it was showing support for the Palestinians, a day after Hamas carried out its attack on southern Israel, triggering the Gaza war. Israel returned fire on Hezbollah, and the two sides have exchanged barrages ever since.

Israel escalated its bombardment in mid-September and later sent troops into Lebanon, vowing to put an end to Hezbollah fire so tens of thousands of evacuated Israelis could return to their homes.

More than 3,760 people have been killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon the past 13 months, many of them civilians, according to Lebanese health officials. The bombardment has driven 1.2 million people from their homes. Israel says it has killed more than 2,000 Hezbollah members.

Hezbollah fire has forced some 50,000 Israelis to evacuate in the country’s north, and its rockets have reached as far south in Israel as Tel Aviv. At least 75 people have been killed, more than half of them civilians. More than 50 Israeli soldiers have died in the ground offensive in Lebanon.

Chehayeb and Mroue reported from Beirut and Federman from Jerusalem. Associated Press reporters Lujain Jo and Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed.