IDF destroys Hezbollah terror assets as Lebanon ground op ramps up

Israel Defense Forces ground troops on Saturday continued to press forward with operations in Southern Lebanon, destroying Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure including observation posts, underground weapons caches and rocket launching sites.

IDF commandos and soldiers from the Combat Engineering Corp’s Yahalom special operations unit also destroyed Hezbollah tunnel shafts used by terrorists to approach the Israeli border.

The military has killed some 400 terrorists since officially launching the ground operation in Southern Lebanon on Monday.

Meanwhile, IDF air defenses on Saturday downed a suspected drone fired from Lebanon towards the Western Galilee border kibbutz of Adamit, triggering sirens in the area.

Earlier, Hezbollah claimed to have fired Fadi-1 rockets at the IDF’s Ramat David Airbase near Haifa. The projectiles were either intercepted or hit in open areas, the military said.

The Iranian terrorist proxy also fired a barrage of five rockets at northern Israel, setting off air-raid sirens across the Jezreel Valley, including in Nazareth, and the Wadi Ara area.

There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Overnight Friday, the IDF conducted a “precise” strike on a Hezbollah command center located in a mosque in Bint Jbeil, within a larger hospital compound.

Hezbollah was using the site “to plan and carry out terrorist acts against IDF troops and the State of Israel,” said the military.

Before the strike, the IDF sent text messages to local residents and called Lebanese officials, “demanding that all acts of terror carried out at the hospital cease immediately.”

“The IDF has made great efforts to prevent harming uninvolved civilians, despite the cynical use by the Hezbollah terrorist organization of civilian infrastructure, including essential buildings, for perpetrating terrorism,” added the IDF.

Also overnight, Saeed Atallah, a leader of Hamas’s terrorist army, the al-Qassam Brigades, was killed in an Israeli strike on a Palestinian camp in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, Reuters reported, citing Hamas-linked media.

On Thursday, the IDF confirmed that an Israeli Air Force strike three months ago killed Hamas’s de facto prime minister in the Gaza Strip. Rawhi Mushtaha was targeted along with senior terrorists Sameh al-Siraj and Sami Odeh, who both held security portfolios in Hamas’s “political” bureau, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

Also on Thursday, an IAF strike in Beirut targeted an underground bunker where Hashem Safieddine and other top Hezbollah terrorists were meeting.

The fate of Safieddine, a maternal cousin of slain terror master Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council and a leading candidate to replace Nasrallah, is not yet clear.

The IDF announced on Wednesday that the 36th Division was joining the 98th Paratrooper Division in the fight against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“The 36th Division, including soldiers of the Golani Brigade, 188th Armored Brigade, 6th Infantry Brigade and additional forces are joining the limited, localized, targeted raids on Hezbollah terror targets and terrorist infrastructure in Southern Lebanon that began on Monday,” the army said.

Jerusalem has escalated its offensive on Hezbollah since adding the return of evacuated Israeli civilians to the north as an official war goal on Sept. 17.

Hezbollah has attacked Israel nearly daily since Oct. 8, 2023, firing some 10,000 rockets, missiles and drones. The attacks have killed more than 40 people and caused widespread damage. Tens of thousands of Israeli civilians remain internally displaced due to the ongoing violence.