In recent weeks since the ceasefire, there has been a growing number of reports from across Lebanon documenting mass funerals of Hezbollah operatives, taking place simultaneously in multiple locations. These events provide a significant indication of the scale of losses the organization has sustained during the current fighting. Hezbollah systematically refrains from publishing full and official figures regarding its casualties. This pattern of behaviour is intended, among other things, to obscure the number of its military operatives eliminated and to incorporate them into the overall count of civilian casualties in Lebanon during the war, without distinguishing between combatants and civilians. This pattern leads to a distortion of the overall picture: the inclusion of Hezbollah operatives among civilian casualties contributes to presenting an unusually high number of “civilian deaths” in Lebanon, and at times creates the impression that the primary harm has been inflicted on the civilian population. However, despite the fact that Hezbollah systematically operates from within civilian environments and embeds its military infrastructure within civilian populations—while also using these areas as human shields—the data indicates that most of those killed are Hezbollah operatives. This is largely the result of targeted strikes carried out by the IDF based on precise intelligence.
