(22 Aug 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Deir Kifa, Lebanon – 20 August 2025
1. SOUNDBITE (English) Abby Sewell, The Associated Press:
"We’re standing here at the base of the force commander’s reserve of UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon. The UNIFIL’s mandate is to patrol and look for violations by both Israeli forces and Hezbollah or other Lebanese groups."
2. French soldiers of UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Mission in Lebanon) boarding their armored vehicle
3. UNIFIL peacekeepers driving armored vehicle
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saluki Valley, Lebanon – 20 August 2025
4. UNIFIL peacekeeping force walking among bushes
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Deir Kifa, Lebanon – 20 August 2025
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Abby Sewell, The Associated Press:
"So, we’ve been on patrol today with some of the forces. We saw one of the five points that Israeli troops are still occupying in southern Lebanon. And we also saw a site that was apparently a former Hezbollah military site with artillery cannon and several rocket launchers."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saluki Valley, Lebanon – 20 August 2025
6. Tilt down from damaged rocket launcher to boxes of ammunition
7. Various of damaged rocket launcher
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Deir Kifa, Lebanon – 20 August 2025
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Abby Sewell, The Associated Press:
"This is significant right now because UNIFIL’s mandate is up for renewal at the UN Security Council within the coming days, so it will be determined whether or not the mission will continue for another year."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kafr Kila, Lebanon – 20 August 2025
9. Various of UN peacekeepers monitoring a mistral surface-to-air missile system
STORYLINE:
A convoy of armored vehicles carrying French peacekeepers barrels through the hills of southern Lebanon that were ground zero in last year’s bruising war between Israeli forces and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The closer the convoy draws to the border, the emptier the villages become and the more buildings have been reduced to rubble.
Some are marked by tattered Lebanese flags, or flags bearing Hezbollah’s insignia of a defiantly raise fist brandishing a Kalashnikov.
From a UNIFIL base on a mountainside overlooking the village of Kafr Kila, the town below appears as a wasteland of crumpled concrete.
On an overlook point opposite the base, one of five points that Israeli forces are still occupying despite a ceasefire inked in November, bulldozers have cleared and leveled swathes of the hilltop.
Farther west along the border in the Saluki Valley, a goat herder tending his flock watches as UNIFIL peacekeepers trek up the steep wooded terrain on the opposite side of the road, while the buzz of an Israeli drone is audible overhead.
Hezbollah’s heavier weapons – long-range missiles and drones – have remained out of sight, and a heated political battle is ongoing in Lebanon amid domestic and international calls for the group to give up its remaining arsenal.
UNIFIL faces a contentious vote on renewing its mandate at the UN Security Council in the coming days.
Israel and prominent voices in the Trump administration describe the force as an ineffectual waste of money that is merely delaying the goal of eliminating Hezbollah’s influence.
Lebanon’s government wants the peacekeepers to remain until Israel withdraws from the points it is holding and the overstretched and cash-strapped Lebanese army has the resources to patrol the border area on its own.
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