Lebanon says 22 killed by Israeli forces as residents try to return home

Israeli forces have killed 22 people in southern Lebanon and injured more than 120 as residents try to return home, Lebanese authorities say. 

According to Lebanon's health ministry, citizens were attacked while they were trying to enter their still-occupied towns.

Under a ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah, the Israeli military was supposed to have withdrawn by Sunday.

However, Israel and Lebanon have now agreed to extend the deadline for Israeli troops to depart southern Lebanon to 18 February, according to the White House.

Israel requested more time to withdraw because Lebanese forces were not deploying quickly enough, while Lebanon said its forces cannot move into areas until Israeli troops leave.

Meanwhile, Israel announced on Sunday evening that on Monday, it will begin allowing the passage of tens of thousands of people waiting to return to northern Gaza.

It refused to open checkpoints on Saturday to allow crossings into the north after accusing Hamas of breaching a ceasefire agreement.

A day after a second exchange involving four Israeli women hostages held in Gaza for 200 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, scores of stranded Palestinians waited along the main roads leading north.

Cars, trucks and rickshaws were overloaded with mattresses, food, and tents that served as shelters for over a year for those in the central and southern areas of the enclave.

The ceasefire deal - mediated by the US, Qatar and Egypt - allows for thousands of displaced Palestinians to return to their communities.

However, not long after the Israeli female soldiers were released on Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would not allow Palestinians to return to northern Gaza until civilian hostage Arbel Yehoud was released.

Hamas has now agreed to release her on Thursday, after "strong and determined negotiations", according to Mr Netanyahu's office.

It is thought she might be held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group in the Gaza Strip.

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Donald Trump has said Jordan and Egypt should take in Palestinians from war-ravaged Gaza.

The US president called on the two nations to take in people either temporarily or permanently, adding: "We should just clear out the whole thing."

"It's literally a demolition site, almost everything is demolished and people are dying there," he told reporters after a call with Jordan's King Abdullah.

Reacting to Mr Trump's suggestion, an official of Hamas echoed longstanding Palestinian fears about being driven permanently from their homes.

Palestinians "will not accept any offers or solutions, even if [such offers] appear to have good intentions under the guise of reconstruction, as announced in the proposals of US President Trump," Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, told the Reuters on Sunday.

(c) Sky News 2025: Lebanon says 22 killed by Israeli forces as residents try to return home