Hezbollah fighters retreat north after truce, past Lebanese civilians heading home

As they pulled back, ordinary residents flowed south, past mountains of rubble, returning to homes they had fled as intensifying fighting engulfed the towns and villages of Lebanon’s south. In Nabatieh some stopped to look at the ruins of the city’s century-old marketplace.

The Hezbollah men said the fighting had been hard since Israeli ground troops pushed into Lebanon in September. One militant said his unit had been on the front for weeks without reinforcements and at times cut off from contact with commanders after Israeli attacks hobbled internal communications.

“I didn’t know if you were alive," said one fighter as he embraced a comrade. “I’m going home to shower. It’s been three months," said another.

Hezbollah’s withdrawal from areas along the Israeli border—coupled with a pullback of Israeli troops—over the next 60 days is central to the U.S.-brokered cease-fire agreement. The U.S., France and United Nations peacekeepers are charged with monitoring adherence to the terms of the truce.

The cease-fire brought relief to millions of Lebanese after months of airstrikes that Israel said targeted Hezbollah leaders, equipment and installations. The Israeli government hopes it will allow tens of thousands of civilians to return home as well after more than a year of Hezbollah missile and rocket attacks.

Hezbollah, a Shiite militia and political party that the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization, started firing on Israel the day after Palestinian militant group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 people. Hamas and Hezbollah receive funding and weapons from Iran.

Under the terms of a 2006 U.N. resolution, Hezbollah, the world’s most well-armed nonstate force, was supposed to withdraw military units and weaponry from southern Lebanon, but it didn’t comply, and neither the U.N. nor the Lebanese government was able to make it do so.

Back-and-forth strikes between Hezbollah and Israel in September turned into an intensified conflict as Israel moved to push Hezbollah away from border areas so that its citizens would feel safe returning to homes in northern Israel.

Israeli airstrikes that wiped out many of the militia’s top leaders also uprooted hundreds of thousands of Lebanese people from their homes. The fighting killed more than 3,700 people in Lebanon, most of them since the September offensive, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

Dozens of Israeli soldiers and civilians have also been killed in the fighting.

After months of refusing to accept a cease-fire without an end to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah quietly accepted a delinking of the two conflicts, paving the way for this week’s truce.

The Hezbollah commander who had been fighting on the front said the group planned to withdraw its heavy weapons and fighters from the south, with the exception of those who live in the south, who would remain with light arms.

“Those who are not from the villages themselves will have to pull back, but you will always have those that are from the same villages," he said, adding that much would depend on how the two-month implementation period unfolds. “Things will become clearer in the next 60 days," he said.

Just outside of Nabatieh, a flatbed truck carrying a rocket launcher could be seen driving north away from the border. Lebanese military armored personnel carriers and trucks carrying bulldozers rumbled south along the coastal highway.

Israel launched several strikes in Lebanon on Thursday, hitting what it said were advancing militants and launching an airstrike on a facility storing rockets. Lebanese authorities said the latter strike hit near the city of Sidon, just south of Beirut and north of the area where Hezbollah is prohibited from stationing its military forces under the terms of the ceasefire.

The strike pointed to another key test for the cease-fire—the conduct of Israeli forces now in a strip of southern Lebanon. The Israeli military said it was “acting to enforce violations of the cease-fire agreement."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel “maintains full freedom of military action," claiming a broad mandate to strike Hezbollah in response to threats or efforts by the group to rearm even after the signing of the cease-fire deal.

The statement came in connection with what officials familiar with the talks said were security guarantees given to Israel by the U.S. separate from the agreement. In comments to Israeli television on Thursday, Netanyahu said he told the Israel Defense Forces, “If there is a massive violation of the agreement, I instructed the IDF to prepare for an intensive war."

After the airstrike on Thursday, the Lebanese army accused Israel of violating the cease-fire agreement by breaching Lebanese airspace and striking Lebanese territory.

Much of Nabatieh, a wealthy commercial hub and one of the largest population centers in southern Lebanon, was in ruins on Thursday. In the center of the Shiite-majority city, children’s notebooks and shoes lay on top of one pile of rubble across from Nabatieh’s Ottoman-era souk.

“I just wanted to gaze, to see, in order to get closure, because maybe I’m never going to see this city again," said Ahmed Ghossein, a Lebanese filmmaker who attended high school in Nabatieh, who stood by the ruins on Thursday. He said he expected Hezbollah to complete the expected military withdrawal. “They don’t have a choice."

The citizens of Nabatieh, like Lebanon as a whole, are taking stock of a future fraught with uncertainty. After years of misrule and corruption, Lebanon was shaken by one of the world’s worst economic contractions in the last century beginning in 2019, depriving it of funds it needs for a reconstruction.

Nabateans are also split over the role that Hezbollah will take in the future of their country.

Ahmed Sabbagh, 53, a money changer who said he doesn’t support Hezbollah, sat with a cat in his lap in front of his shop that he reopened Thursday morning. He watched as a few of Hezbollah’s civilian supporters drove past waving the group’s yellow flags.

“Each party in the conflict feels they accomplished something, so I’m optimistic that the cease-fire won’t collapse," he said. “I’m hopeful that these are the birth pains of something better."

Najiba Mroueh, 49, sat outside her apartment building with her two sons. A self-identified communist, she said she isn’t a Hezbollah supporter, but respected their role as a military force.

“They were the only ones who stood with us," she said.

Write to Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com