The military said troops operating in the village of Yaroun had damaged a structure inside a religious compound while dismantling what it described as “terrorist infrastructure” in the area.

“It was determined that during the forces’ operations to destroy terrorist infrastructure, one of the houses located in a religious compound was damaged,” the military’s Arabic-language spokesman, Colonel Avichay Adraee, said on X.

“There were no visible signs indicating this was a religious building,” he continued.

“Once clear identifying features were observed on another building in the compound, the forces acted to prevent any further damage to the compound.”

Adraee justified the presence of troops in the area by citing multiple rocket attacks launched by Hezbollah from within the compound toward Israeli territory, as fighting continues in spite of a ceasefire.

The French Catholic charity L’Oeuvre d’Orient said the troops had “destroyed” a convent belonging to the Salvatorian Sisters, a Greek-Catholic religious order with which the charity is affiliated.

“L’Oeuvre d’Orient strongly condemns this deliberate act of destruction against a place of worship, as well as the systematic demolition of homes in southern Lebanon aimed at preventing the return of civilian populations,” it said in a statement.

But Israel’s foreign ministry denied the site —which it described as “a monastery” — had been destroyed, saying on X the site was “intact and safe”, posting a photograph of a two-storey house.

The incident comes days after the military jailed two soldiers for 30 days for desecrating a statue of Jesus Christ in the Christian village of Debl in south Lebanon, near the border with Israel.

A photograph that went viral on social media showed a soldier using a sledgehammer to strike the statue’s head.

Israel has kept up deadly strikes on Lebanon despite the April 17 ceasefire that sought to halt more than six weeks of war between it and Hezbollah.

The ceasefire text grants Israel the right to act against “planned, imminent or ongoing attacks”.

Israeli soldiers are operating inside a “Yellow Line” running some 10 kilometres deep inside Lebanon’s border, where they are carrying out wide-scale detonations and demolitions of buildings.