Nabatieh

Overview

Nabatieh is a city in southern Lebanon and an established urban center for surrounding communities. It is the administrative center of Nabatieh District and Nabatieh Governorate. Those names describe different places: the city is a single urban locality, the district includes other towns and villages, and the governorate covers a wider area of southern Lebanon. Reports about an event in Nabatieh Governorate therefore do not necessarily describe an event inside Nabatieh city.

The city’s commercial life has long centered on its market, which drew traders and shoppers from nearby communities. Municipal offices, a government hospital, courts and local service organizations also gave Nabatieh a role beyond its residential neighborhoods. The historic market district suffered extensive damage during the 2024 fighting. On October 16 of that year, an Israeli airstrike hit the municipal building and killed Mayor Ahmad Kahil. Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health recorded 16 deaths, including Kahil, and 52 injuries in the strike.

Geography

Nabatieh lies inland in southern Lebanon, north of the Litani River. The city belongs to Nabatieh District, which in turn is part of Nabatieh Governorate. This administrative distinction matters when describing military operations and their effects. Braiqa is in Nabatieh District but outside the city; Kfar Dounin and Houla are elsewhere in the governorate. Meiss al Jabal and Taybeh are in the governorate’s Marjayoun District. None of those localities is a neighborhood of Nabatieh city.

Nabatieh’s position among southern Lebanese towns helped make it a place of exchange and public services. Its market connected merchants with customers from neighboring villages, while its hospital served patients whose care could continue elsewhere when local facilities closed. The Litani River also shaped administration of nearby land. In June 2020, Lebanon’s Litani River Authority directed residents of an informal Syrian refugee settlement in Nabatieh to move farther from the river.

Modern history

Nabatieh developed as a market center during the centuries when the area formed part of the Ottoman Empire. Its longstanding market remained a feature of the city after Ottoman rule ended. Trade brought people from surrounding settlements into the urban center, making the market a place of everyday economic and social contact. Nabatieh continued to serve this regional role within the modern Lebanese state. By 2024, its older commercial streets still formed part of the city’s recognizable center.

Public institutions in Nabatieh have also figured in wider Lebanese debates. On July 2, 2022, a civil court in the city temporarily awarded a divorced mother custody of her one-month-old infant so she could breastfeed the child. The infant had remained with the father while sharia courts failed to act. The civil court’s intervention became part of Lebanon’s debate over the jurisdiction of religious courts in personal-status cases. The ruling concerned an immediate custody decision; its wider significance lay in a civil judge acting while the religious-court process had produced no timely remedy.

Events at Nabatieh’s government hospital illustrated another pressure on local services. An explosion occurred in the basement of Nabih Berri Government Hospital on February 7, 2023. An oxygen leak was identified as its apparent cause, although no formal investigation had been carried out when the account published later that month described it. Patients were transferred to other institutions. The hospital closed, and the reported cost of repairs left it closed until further notice.

The 2020 action against the Syrian refugee settlement likewise involved a local institution with authority beyond ordinary municipal services. On June 8, the Litani River Authority ordered 42 residents of the informal settlement to relocate farther from the river. The next day, it returned with Lebanese security forces and demolished the shelters. Families received no advance notice of the demolition and no time to retrieve their belongings. The episode formed part of a broader Lebanese pattern in which informal refugee settlements faced removal without a practical opportunity to challenge the action before it occurred.

Security

Hezbollah, a terrorist organization, initiated cross-border fire against Israel on October 8, 2023. Its attacks began the Israel–Hezbollah conflict (2023–present), which later reached Nabatieh. Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians during the conflict and displaced approximately 68,500 Israelis along the border. The attacks and Israel’s subsequent operations affected communities on both sides of the frontier, including urban areas farther inside Lebanon.

Hezbollah placed personnel and control centers in densely populated areas. Around Nabatieh, Israeli operations targeted Hezbollah command centers and weapons storage facilities situated beside civilian infrastructure. The proximity of military assets to homes and public facilities exposed residents to danger as fighting intensified. Israeli forces called on residents of Nabatieh and other southern Lebanese localities to evacuate in October 2024, warning that proximity to Hezbollah personnel, facilities or weapons put civilians at risk.

Israeli strikes reached Nabatieh’s commercial center in October 2024 and damaged its historic market district. On October 16, an Israeli airstrike hit the city’s municipal building. Mayor Ahmad Kahil was killed there. Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health recorded 16 deaths and 52 injuries in the strike; its reported totals did not distinguish civilians from combatants. The loss of the mayor and damage to municipal infrastructure struck institutions responsible for local services during the fighting. The municipal-building strike occurred amid Israeli operations against Hezbollah weapons stores and command centers around Nabatieh, including facilities placed beside civilian structures.

Nabatieh’s emergency-rescue sector also came under scrutiny during the conflict. The Nabatieh Emergency Rescue Service Association belongs to a network of cultural, health, religious, social-service and youth organizations under the Husseini Club. The club has publicly supported Hezbollah, its leaders and its actions, and expressed support for the October 7 attacks. These institutional ties are relevant when assessing the association’s public role and the independence of testimony from its leadership; they do not, by themselves, establish that every rescue worker participated in Hezbollah activity.

Mahdi Sadeq had served as the rescue association’s executive director since at least January 2018. On June 16, 2024, he shared an image of Nabatieh emergency-rescue personnel beside a Hezbollah fighter firing an RPG. Sadeq praised the pictured personnel for sacrifice and answering the call. Human Rights Watch extensively quoted him in a report released on February 17, 2025. His public endorsement of that image and the association’s Husseini Club affiliation provide context for his testimony and for discussion of the organization’s relationship with Hezbollah.

Military reports using the name Nabatieh also require close attention to district and governorate boundaries. In January 2026, an Israeli drone struck a vehicle in Braiqa, within Nabatieh District but outside Nabatieh city, wounding two people. A strike at Kfar Dounin, elsewhere in Nabatieh Governorate, killed Hezbollah operatives Abbas Hussain Mahmoud and Mohammad Wassim Faqih. The two operatives targeted near Khirbet Selm were involved in restoring Hezbollah military infrastructure in the governorate. These reports concern separate localities and should not be read as accounts of strikes in the city center.

Other operations in the wider governorate were similarly distinct from events inside Nabatieh. Israeli forces detonated a three-story residential building in Houla. An Israeli quadcopter dropped an explosive on an excavator in Meiss al Jabal, and an Israeli drone struck a construction site in Taybeh. Meiss al Jabal and Taybeh lie in Marjayoun District, while Houla is another locality outside Nabatieh city. The incidents show the geographic reach of operations across the governorate without changing the location of any individual strike.

Present day

Nabatieh’s recent history combines its enduring role as a southern Lebanese center with the effects of war on municipal administration, commerce and health care. Damage to the market affected a place that had served generations of traders and customers. The municipal-building strike killed the mayor and injured dozens of people. The earlier hospital explosion had already forced patients into other institutions. Together, these events placed substantial demands on services used by both city residents and people from surrounding communities.

Foreign involvement in the area continued after the intense 2024 fighting. In February 2025, Iran’s ambassador Amani visited Nabatieh and reviewed work by Iranian popular committees involved in rehabilitating schools, mosques and religious centers around the city. The visit linked local rebuilding to Iran’s diplomatic engagement in southern Lebanon. Nabatieh remained a city with its own civic and commercial history, while reports of later operations across Nabatieh Governorate described a much larger geographic area.