BEIRUT, March 27 - Two individuals familiar with Hezbollah's own tally said the Lebanese armed group has lost more than 400 fighters since the conflict with Israel expanded on March 2. That figure represents the first comprehensive total attributed to the group’s combat losses in Lebanon during the current round of hostilities.
Hezbollah itself has released only intermittent notices naming a few individual fighters and has not published a single consolidated casualty figure. By contrast, during a 2023-2024 conflict with Israel the group issued daily death notices for each fighter who was killed and later reported that about 5,000 of its members had died over the course of that war.
The Israeli military has provided a higher estimate of Hezbollah losses in the latest fighting, saying this week that it has killed at least 700 Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon. That tally, according to the military, includes hundreds of members of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force.
Separately, Lebanon’s health ministry reported on Friday that Israeli strikes and ground operations have resulted in 1,142 fatalities inside Lebanon. The ministry specified that among the dead are 122 children, 83 women and 42 medical personnel. The health ministry does not otherwise distinguish between civilians and combatants in its totals.
On Friday the Israeli military said that overnight operations in Lebanon left a soldier and a combat officer severely injured. Earlier statements from the military said four of its soldiers have been killed in fighting in southern Lebanon.
Context and reporting notes
The different tallies offered by sources close to Hezbollah, by Lebanese health authorities and by the Israeli military highlight the varying counts used by each party in chronicling the human cost of the intensifying violence. The Lebanese health ministry’s aggregate death figure includes specific counts for children, women and medical personnel, but it does not separate combatants from non-combatants.
As operations continue, the available figures reflect both battlefield losses reported by military authorities and broader casualty totals recorded by civilian health authorities, with notable discrepancies between those sets of numbers.