Culture minister: Israeli attacks devastate South Lebanon’s heritage
Al Mayadeen | June 28, 2026
“Israel’s” military aggression in southern Lebanon has damaged or destroyed heritage sites across the region, including UNESCO-listed landmarks, historic towns, religious sites, and archaeological monuments, Lebanon’s Culture Minister Ghassan Salame told Reuters, warning that authorities have yet to assess the full extent of the destruction due to the continued Israeli military presence in parts of southern Lebanon.
According to Salame, Israeli forces remain stationed in an approximately 10-kilometer-deep zone inside southern Lebanon despite the ceasefire that came into effect a week ago, preventing officials from conducting comprehensive damage assessments. “We cannot work under the shadow of occupation,” he said.
The occupied zone includes the medieval Beaufort Castle and centuries-old border villages that were home to Christian, Shiite Muslim, and Sunni Muslim communities, along with their places of worship. Salame said entire villages had been erased, adding, “There are villages that have been completely bulldozed.”
Beyond the occupied areas, Israeli airstrikes also struck historic cities including Tyre, Nabatieh, and Tebnin. Salame expressed concern that Tebnin’s Crusader-era fortress may have sustained damage during the bombardment.
“Heritage is not only Roman and Phoenician antiquities,” Salame said. “Heritage is also historic buildings, archaeological sites, and buildings with a cultural function.”
Among the sites affected was the UNESCO World Heritage city of Tyre, where a crown was blown off an ancient Roman column. A pilgrimage site revered by both Muslims and Christians was reportedly destroyed in another southern town, while Israeli strikes heavily damaged the Mamluk-era market in Nabatieh and razed centuries-old villages along the border.
In response to Reuters‘ questions, the Israeli military said it does not seek “to cause excessive damage to civilian infrastructure and strikes only out of military necessity, with consideration for the safety of its citizens.” It added that operations involving “sensitive sites” undergo “a rigorous approval process as required.”
The Israeli military has also accuse
Modern-day Lebanon contains archaeological and historical sites reflecting civilizations including the Phoenicians, Byzantines, Mamluks, and Crusaders. Tyre, whose origins date back nearly 5,000 years, remains one of the country’s most significant cultural landmarks and is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Following months of Israeli bombardment, large parts of Tyre have been reduced to rubble. Protective barriers erected around the archaeological site to shield it from strikes and debris were themselves destroyed during the attacks.
“Look at the damage that happened to it, it’s as if it all exploded from underneath, as if an earthquake hit it,” Adnan Istanbouli of Lebanon’s antiquities department told Reuters while inspecting damage near a Roman mosaic.
Tyre’s Deputy Mayor Alwan Charafeddine said the city should have been protected under international conventions.
“It is supposed to be one of the cities that is internationally protected, or that should never be targeted in any way, in any conflict,” he said.
UNESCO voices concern over cultural destruction
Last month, UNESCO expressed concern over the condition of Tyre, which is listed as a World Heritage Site under enhanced protection status. The agency also said it was “deeply alarmed” by reports of damage to a citadel in the southern town of Chama and by fighting around Beaufort Castle, while condemning what it described as “unlawful attacks against cultural property.”
Following Israeli strikes on Tyre, Salame requested that UNESCO classify the city as a World Heritage Site in Danger, a designation that would trigger additional international protection measures. The request has not yet been approved.
Salame also pointed to earlier remarks by Israeli War Minister Israel Katz, who said during the conflict that Israeli forces would destroy all houses along Lebanon’s border.
Warning of the long-term consequences, Salame said the destruction threatens to erase centuries of Lebanon’s cultural identity.
“There is something systematic: a systematic destruction of villages, hamlets, and entire towns,” he told Reuters.
Share this:
Related
June 28, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Israel, Lebanon, Zionism
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Featured Video
Thomas Fazi: NATO’s Hybrid Warfare – Deception & Permanent War
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Review
The Zeolite Book — First Edition, 2026, Paperback
The volcanic mineral medicine will not patent — for the toxic burden medicine will not name
Lies are Unbekoming – October 30, 2026
Zeolite is old. It is in Roman concrete that has held for two thousand years. It’s in the water filters of ancient cisterns. It’s in the stomachs of Pacific livestock whose keepers knew, somehow, that this grey crumbling rock made the animals healthier. It’s in Soviet clinical protocols from the 1960s. It’s in the standard emergency response to the Chernobyl explosion.
In 1986, after the Chernobyl reactor failure, the Soviet Union manufactured and distributed natural zeolite at industrial scale — for soil remediation, for livestock feed, for human consumption, for the cleanup itself. Karl Hecht, who had been director of the Institute for Experimental and Clinical Pathophysiology at the Charité of Humboldt University Berlin, spent the six decades after that building the clinical research base — on silicon’s role in human health, on zeolite’s clinical safety, on its applications in ageing. In 2018, Pavelić and colleagues published a comprehensive clinical safety review of natural clinoptilolite in Frontiers in Pharmacology. In 2019, Mastinu analysed its binding affinities. In the Western medical literature, these works sit largely uncited.
What has not been treated at book length, until now, is how a volcanic mineral with six decades of Soviet clinical work behind it, two major peer-reviewed Western reviews, and ongoing clinical use across the former Eastern Bloc, remains almost entirely absent from Western medical practice — and what the toxic burden it’s meant to address actually is.
The Zeolite Book gathers the Soviet clinical record, the Western peer-reviewed studies, three contemporary practitioner voices, and three serious counterviews into one honest treatment. That’s why the book runs to seven appendices. 288 pages, four parts, three practitioner voices, three counterviews, seven appendices. The honest treatment is the argument.
Blog Roll
-
Join 2,366 other subscribers
Visits Since December 2009
- 7,793,999 hits
Looking for something?
Archives
Calendar
Categories
Aletho News Civil Liberties Corruption Deception Economics Environmentalism Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism Fake News False Flag Terrorism Full Spectrum Dominance Illegal Occupation Mainstream Media, Warmongering Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity Militarism Progressive Hypocrite Russophobia Science and Pseudo-Science Solidarity and Activism Subjugation - Torture Supremacism, Social Darwinism Timeless or most popular Video War Crimes Wars for IsraelTags
Afghanistan Africa AIPAC al-Qaeda Australia BBC Benjamin Netanyahu Brazil Canada CDC Central Intelligence Agency China CIA CNN Covid-19 COVID-19 Vaccine Donald Trump Egypt European Union Facebook FBI FDA France Gaza Germany Google Hamas Hebron Hezbollah Hillary Clinton Human rights Hungary India Iran Iraq ISIS Israel Israeli settlement Japan Jerusalem Joe Biden Korea Latin America Lebanon Libya Middle East National Security Agency NATO New York Times North Korea NSA Obama Pakistan Palestine Poland Qatar Russia Sanctions against Iran Saudi Arabia Syria The Guardian Turkiye Twitter UAE UK Ukraine United Nations United States USA Venezuela Washington Post West Bank WHO Yemen Zionism
Aletho News- UAE security forces tortured, killed journalist for opposing Israel normalization: Report
- They Compared the Spice to the Drug. The Spice Won — Again. (Part 2)
- Thomas Fazi: NATO’s Hybrid Warfare – Deception & Permanent War
- Wrong, AP and NPR: Europe’s 50,000 Heat Deaths Are a Computer-Model Estimate, Not a Real Body Count
- Questioning Your Doctor Is Now Considered A Psychological Problem (Seriously)
- London tourism expo promotes Israeli agency linked to theft of Palestinian land
- Dockworkers launch global strike against Israeli and US military shipments
- Europe facing gas price shock – Gazprom chief
- Ukraine continues recruiting people with disabilities
- Weaponized Journalism: 2021 Sayer Ji Interview with NPR
If Americans Knew- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
No Tricks Zone- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
Contact:
atheonews (at) gmail.com
Disclaimer
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
