As residents of southern Lebanon begin returning to neighbourhoods reduced to rubble, new data shared with Sky News illustrates the impact of the conflict.

The Centre for Information Resilience has verified more than 400 videos showing 300 separate incidents of harm to civilians and damage to infrastructure in Lebanon.

It offers a window into the extent of the destruction since fighting began in October last year.

This research is part of a larger set of open-source data showing harm to civilians and damage to infrastructure collected by CIR on and since 7 October last year, covering Gaza, the West Bank and Israel, as well as Lebanon.

As of 25 November, fighting had displaced more than 899,000 people in Lebanon and killed nearly 4,000 people, according to the International Organisation for Migration, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Lebanese health ministry.

The number of deaths – mostly recorded since September, when Israel ramped up attacks against Hezbollah members in Beirut – does not distinguish between civilians and Hezbollah fighters.

Across Lebanon, the cost of physical damages and economic loss due to the conflict is estimated at $8.5bn, according to a World Bank report published on 14 November. Almost 100,000 housing units have been damaged or fully destroyed.

Across the border in northern Israel, more than 60,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, and 80 soldiers and 50 civilians have been killed in Hezbollah attacks, according to Israeli officials.

The Institute for the Study of War has recorded attacks by Hezbollah and Israel between 7 October 2023 and 26 November, the day before the ceasefire.

Since the ceasefire was announced, thousands of those displaced have started streaming back to deserted neighbourhoods in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli military warned displaced Lebanese against moving south towards previously evacuated villages.

“We inform you that starting from 5pm until tomorrow morning at 7am it is absolutely forbidden to travel south of the Litani river,” said Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic spokesperson.

“Whoever is north of the Litani river is prohibited from moving south. Whoever is south of the Litani river must remain where he is,” the statement added.

The warning was published on X just minutes before the curfew was due to come into force.

Some residents had already made the journey.

In footage verified by Sky News, a resident returned to Kfarchouba, right on the border with Israel, which appears to have been reduced to rubble.

Further south, in Bint Jbeil, people returning home filmed from their car windows, showing destroyed buildings and empty streets. In most cases, residents are not coming back to the same places they left.

While the ceasefire brings an end to over a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, there is concern over whether the deal will hold.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

Three American citizens who had been detained in China for years have been released, Sky’s US partner network NBC News reports.

Kai Li, Mark Swidan and John Leung will return to the US, reportedly after an agreement was reached as part of sensitive negotiations.

It comes after Politico cited an unnamed US official claiming years-long attempts to free the trio have succeeded, in exchange for unidentified Chinese citizens in US custody.

“We are pleased to announce the release of Mark Swidan, Kai Li, and John Leung from detention in the People’s Republic of China,” a State Department spokesperson said.

“Soon they will return and be reunited with their families for the first time in many years.

“Thanks to this administration’s efforts and diplomacy with the PRC [People’s Republic of China], all of the wrongfully detained Americans in the PRC are home.”

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said he’s worked closely with Mr Li’s son, Harrison Li, who has previously said “I have now spent a third of my life missing my dad”.

“Even when it felt like there was no hope, we never stopped believing that one day Mr Li would return home,” Mr Schumer said in a statement on Wednesday.

For the families of all three freed Americans, “this Thanksgiving there is so much to be thankful for”, he added.

It comes after the surprise release of US pastor David Lin in September, after he had been in jail in China since 2006.

What were the trio accused of?

Mr Li, 70, was detained in 2016 and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in 2018 on espionage charges his family described as baseless.

Texas businessman Mr Swidan, in his 40s, had been held since 2012 and sentenced to death with a reprieve in 2019 on drug-related charges a UN group said has no basis.

Mr Leung, an American in his 70s who also has permanent residency in the Chinese territory of Hong Kong, was arrested in 2021 and sentenced to life in prison last year.

He had been found guilty of espionage by a court in eastern China.

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In September, Mr Swidan’s mother, Katherine Swidan, and Harrison Li were among the relatives who appeared before the congressional executive commission on China to press the US government to do more.

“Every day, I wake up and shudder at the thought of him crammed into a tiny cell with as many as 11 other people,” Harrison said at the hearing.

He added in the last eight years his father had suffered a stroke, lost a tooth and spent more than three years “essentially locked in his cell 24/7” due to China’s “zero-Covid” restrictions.

He was also concerned efforts to release his father and others could be slowed by the change of administration in January.

Chinese citizens identified

Two men sent back to China were identified as Xu Yanjun, an officer for China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), and Ji Chaoqun, a Chinese national, CNBC’s Eamon Javers said, quoting a US government official.

Xu Yanjun was arrested for trying to steal technology from GE Aviation, according to a CNBC documentary aired last year.

Dozens more held

The Dui Hua Foundation, which monitors prisoner rights in China, estimates there are about 200 American detainees, more than in any other foreign country.

This figure includes Americans imprisoned as well as those who are prevented from leaving the country while a case is under investigation.

The US classifies only a handful of them as wrongfully detained.

Other families are still waiting for the return of relatives detained in China, including Nelson Wells Jr and Dawn Hunt.

Many others have not made their cases public out of fear it could obstruct their return.

A former Manchester City football player is set to be Georgia’s next president after the ruling party selected him as its candidate. 

Mikheil Kavelashvili, 53, who also played for Georgia‘s national team, is almost certain to be elected to the largely ceremonial position.

The new president will be chosen by the 300-seat electoral college, which is largely controlled by the ruling Georgian Dream party.

Their success in last month’s parliamentary election has been disputed by European election observers, who have described instances of bribery, double voting and physical violence.

The victory sparked protests and led to the opposition boycotting parliament.

Critics have accused Georgian Dream of becoming increasingly authoritarian and tilted towards Moscow.

Mr Kavelashvili told reporters “radicalisation and polarisation” in the country have been fuelled from abroad.

He accused the outgoing president of violating the constitution and declared that he would “restore the presidency to its constitutional framework”.

Georgian Dream recently pushed through laws similar to those used by the Kremlin to crack down on freedom of speech and LGBTQ+ rights.

In June, the EU suspended Georgia’s membership application process indefinitely after parliament passed a law requiring organisations that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as “pursuing the interest of a foreign power”.

That is similar to a Russian law used to discredit groups critical of the government.

On Monday President Salome Zourabichvili, who has rejected the official election results, refused to recognise the parliament’s legitimacy. Her six-year term expires next month.

She was elected by popular vote, but Georgia has approved constitutional changes that abolished the direct election of the president.

Instead the new president will be selected by a vote from an electoral college, consisting of 300 members of parliament, municipal councils and regional legislatures.

Georgian Dream has a majority in the college, making the approval of Mr Kavelashvili’s candidacy all but certain.

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Mr Kavelashvili was a striker for Manchester City in the 1995-6 season and played for several clubs in the Swiss Super League. He was elected to parliament in 2016 on the Georgian Dream ticket.

In 2022, he co-founded the People’s Power political movement, which has become known for its strong anti-Western rhetoric. It is aligned with the Georgian Dream party in parliament.