A convoy of armored vehicles carrying French peacekeepers barrels through the hills of southern Lebanon that were ground zero in last year’s bruising war between Israeli forces and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

The closer the convoy draws to the border, the emptier the villages become and the more buildings have been reduced to rubble.

Some are marked by tattered Lebanese flags, or flags bearing Hezbollah’s insignia of a defiantly raise fist brandishing a Kalashnikov.

From a UNIFIL base on a mountainside overlooking the village of Kafr Kila, the town below appears as a wasteland of crumpled concrete.

On an overlook point opposite the base, one of five points that Israeli forces are still occupying despite a ceasefire inked in November, bulldozers have cleared and leveled swathes of the hilltop.

Farther west along the border in the Saluki Valley, a goat herder tending his flock watches as UNIFIL peacekeepers trek up the steep wooded terrain on the opposite side of the road, while the buzz of an Israeli drone is audible overhead.

Less than 200 meters in, the peacekeepers find the first sign of what was once apparently a Hezbollah military camp - an artillery cannon tucked away in the trees.

An abandoned shack nearby is littered with blankets, playing cards and books.

"We are discovering all kinds of weapons - it can be a rocket launcher, it can be cannon, it can be small arms, it can be mine, it, can be an IED, it can, be a lot of ammunition," said Col. Arnaud de Coincy, commander of UNIFIL's Force Commander Reserve, comprised of some 700 French and 200 Finnish peacekeepers.

Earlier this month, Lebanese army soldiers were killed in an explosion at an arms depot where they were dismantling a cache of munitions.

Hezbollah's heavier weapons - long-range missiles and drones - have remained out of sight, and a heated political battle is ongoing in Lebanon amid domestic and international calls for the group to give up its remaining arsenal.

UNIFIL faces a contentious vote on renewing its mandate at the UN Security Council in the coming days.

Israel and prominent voices in the Trump administration describe the force as an ineffectual waste of money that is merely delaying the goal of eliminating Hezbollah’s influence.

Lebanon's government wants the peacekeepers to remain until Israel withdraws from the points it is holding and the overstretched and cash-strapped Lebanese army has the resources to patrol the border area on its own.

De Coincy said the situation is still fragile and UNIFIL's ongoing presence is needed "to restore stability, security and peace."

"I'm definitely convinced think that south Lebanon and Lebanese Army Forces still need us to support them on a daily basis," he said.

AP video shot by Fadi Tawil and Mahammad Aounti

Production by Abby Sewell