Inside Lebanon as Israel and Hezbollah wage war
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Monday, Israel announced it's preparing a ground offensive into Lebanon. Fighting between the Israeli military and Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy group, has ratcheted up since the death of Iran’s supreme leader more than two weeks ago. Over 900 people have been killed in Lebanon and nearly one million are displaced. Will Israel’s new campaign bring a quicker end to the fighting? Or prolong a war which is already spiralling out of control?
This episode contains graphic descriptions that some listeners may find distressing.
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Guests:
- Lousie Callaghan, foreign correspondent, The Sunday Times.
- Tom Ball, reporter, The Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Producers: Micaela Arneson, Julia Webster.
We want to hear from you - email: thestory@thetimes.com
Read more: IDF prepares for Lebanon offensive: ‘We don’t know how this ends’
Further listening: The Gulf's moment of truth - reshaping the Middle East
Clips: IDF via @NationalDefence Youtube.
Photo: Getty Images.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. |
| 0:05.9 | I'm Manvina. |
| 0:09.9 | While all eyes have been on the US and Israel's war with Iran, |
| 0:14.5 | there's relatively little coverage of the second front of the war in the Middle East. |
| 0:21.1 | We were in Thir and driving around, looking at the destruction and speaking to people who'd |
| 0:27.7 | experienced it. Then we met the sky called Abu Jaffir. |
| 0:30.2 | That's Louise Callaghan, foreign correspondent at the Sunday Times, who's been reporting from Lebanon |
| 0:35.7 | where people like Abu Jafar have been caught in the crossfire |
| 0:39.0 | between Israel and Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Shia militia. She's been hearing graphic stories, |
| 0:46.9 | which some listeners may find shocking. He lives a few doors down from this area where a lot of electricity generators were being stored. |
| 0:57.8 | And a week or so ago that was hit by the Israeli bombardment. |
| 1:01.5 | And the explosion that it caused, I mean, it's just absolutely enormous. |
| 1:06.2 | Heard we're all right. |
| 1:07.6 | It's all right. |
| 1:09.8 | He showed us around this site. I mean, it's this huge area which is completely destroyed. It was still smoking, twisted metal lying everywhere. You could see the kind of remains of the generators and people were picking through the rubble trying to find some of their belongings. |
| 1:37.6 | He told us that a few days earlier when the strike happened that he was at home with his family eating ifhtar, which is the meal to break your fast during Ramadan. |
| 1:45.2 | People were preparing to sit down and eat. |
| 1:47.1 | And then he saw this huge explosion just down the street. |
| 1:50.0 | He saw this fire shoot up. |
| 1:52.2 | And he ran out to try and see what happened. |
| 1:57.2 | Do you know? |
| 1:57.7 | You know, people who say, me, no. |
... |
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