Beirut: The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimated the direct damage to buildings in South Lebanon caused by Israeli attacks at USD 1.38 billion.
According to Qatar News Agency, this estimation was derived from a rapid building-level damage assessment across South Lebanon, which was conducted in coordination with the Lebanese National Council for Scientific Research. The comprehensive assessment revealed that 11,095 buildings were completely destroyed, impacting 17,891 housing units. Additionally, 2,242 buildings sustained partial damage, affecting 5,219 housing units, while 9,311 buildings incurred minor damage, impacting 18,282 housing units.
The assessment provided a detailed overview of the damage scale but did not account for basements, underground structures, or critical infrastructure damage, such as roads, bridges, electricity, water, and telecommunications. This underscores the possibility of further, unquantified damages that could affect the region's recovery efforts.
The assessment employed a Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI) workflow and was complemented by office-based visual validation. However, it did not undergo a ground-truthing exercise, which might have provided additional verification of the findings. The data used in the assessment was derived from high-resolution satellite imagery taken on April 29, 2026, and compared with a baseline from October 23, 2025.