Lebanon’s protected heritage sites are facing fresh damage as international cultural bodies warn that strikes have hit or threatened some of the country’s most significant archaeological landmarks.
Icomos Lebanon said in a June 8 statement that a strike at the entrance to Tyre, the ancient coastal city and Unesco World Heritage Site, had damaged the entrance precinct, administrative buildings, and archaeological warehouses. The organization said the full extent of the harm to the site’s archaeological fabric could not yet be assessed because of the security situation, but confirmed that direct damage had been documented. Tyre was recently granted Enhanced Protection under the Second Protocol to the 1954 Hague Convention, a status intended to provide stronger safeguards for cultural property in conflict.
Unesco said on June 9 that it had “stepped up support” after damage was confirmed at Tyre, Beaufort Castle, and Chama’ Citadel, all of them under enhanced protection, while strikes were also reported near other protected locations. The Lebanese Ministry of Culture has joined the alarm. On June 5, culture minister Ghassan Salameh wrote to Unesco director-general Khaled El-Enany requesting urgent intervention to prevent the destruction of Beaufort Castle, which Israeli forces captured on May 31.
In his letter, Salameh asked for “immediate and urgent intervention” and warned that silence in the face of the threat would invite violations with irreversible consequences for heritage protected under international law.
Beaufort Castle, or Qalaat al-Chqif, is a 12th-century Crusader fortress whose hilltop position made it strategically valuable for centuries. It was captured and recaptured during the Crusades, later seized by Israel in the 1982 Lebanon war, and has since become a potent symbol of the conflict in southern Lebanon. The site has been under the Lebanese culture ministry’s protection since 2000, and Unesco granted it enhanced protection in 2024 after years of restoration work aimed at opening it to the public, researchers, and tourists.
The Israeli Defense Forces said on June 7 that the area was targeted because it was a “strategic geographic asset” used by Hezbollah to launch missiles into northern Israel and that forces were dismantling underground infrastructure carved into the rocky terrain. Lebanon’s Directorate General of Antiquities disputed that account, saying the claims could be used to justify attacks on the historic site and that the infrastructure shown in circulated maps and videos was far from the castle and unrelated to the archaeological complex.
For heritage advocates, the immediate concern is not only damage already confirmed, but the precedent set when protected monuments become military terrain. In a conflict zone, that distinction can disappear quickly — and with it, irreplaceable layers of history.
