Hezbollah starts aid payments to displaced Lebanese

Hezbollah said Monday it had begun distributing a first tranche of financial aid to Lebanese people displaced by its latest war with Israel, starting in the Nabatieh region of southern Lebanon.

The Iran-backed group said the payments were for people whose homes were destroyed or made uninhabitable, and for residents of Israeli-occupied areas in the south, if they have no other place to live. Hezbollah had announced on October 13 that housing-related aid would be capped at $14,000 a year and paid in four instalments over one year. It did not specify the source of the money or the number of beneficiaries.

The payments come as Lebanese authorities say they are tightening controls on Hezbollah's channels for obtaining money and weapons as part of a campaign to disarm the group, and despite US sanctions on Iran, Hezbollah's backer.

Hezbollah drew Lebanon into a new war with Israel on March 2 in support of Iran after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. Authorities' provisional figures say wars waged by Hezbollah against Israel since 2023 have damaged or destroyed more than 290,000 homes, particularly in southern Lebanon and Beirut's southern suburbs.

Violence in the south has decreased since June after a Washington-Tehran memorandum of understanding and a Lebanon-Israel framework agreement that includes Hezbollah's disarmament.