“Immediately after the ceasefire came into force at 4am, residents of south Lebanon, the southern suburbs of Beirut and the Bekaa (valley) began their return after months of forced displacement,” said the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. “Heavy traffic [was] observed on the highway from Beirut to the south since the early hours of this morning.”
The development comes after months of relatively low-level exchanges of fire across the UN-patrolled Blue Line separating Hezbollah armed militants in Lebanon from Israel escalated into full-blown war in September, killing thousands of civilians and uprooting more than 886,000 people, according to the UN migration agency, IOM.