IDF says troops nabbed 3 Hezbollah commandos hiding under building in south Lebanon
Military releases interrogation footage suggesting dissension among terror group’s ranks; Lebanon PM says he received reassurances from US that Israel will reduce strikes in Beirut
The IDF said on Tuesday that it had nabbed three members of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces after discovering them in a shaft underneath a building in southern Lebanon, amid the ground offensive against the Lebanese terror group.
In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces said that troops from the Golani Brigade’s 13th Battalion discovered the Radwan operatives “entrenched” in the shaft “alongside many weapons and equipment needed for a long stay.”
The IDF did not say when the Hezbollah operatives were captured, and there was no immediate announcement from the Lebanese terror group on the matter.
The military also published a video clip of an alleged Radwan operative being interrogated about the terror group’s plans in southern Lebanon and the current state of its operations. It was unclear whether the suspect in the video was one of the three that the IDF said it arrested.
In the video, he painted a picture of chaos within Hezbollah at large and the Radwan forces in particular.
Several days before being discovered, he said, an airstrike in the vicinity had cut his contact with a nearby cell of four operatives. Then, the three men he had been stationed with fled, leaving him alone.
“The village was emptied,” he said. He added that the regional commander and his deputy both abandoned their posts before the fighters did, speculating that they did so because “they had conflicts among themselves.”
Pressed on the matter by the interrogator, the Radwan fighter posited that those who fled had “little faith,” having chosen to join Hezbollah for the money rather than ideology.
“Of course, they were scared of Israel,” he acknowledged.
The interrogator then turned his attention to a different topic.
“What was the Radwan Force’s goal over the last period?” he asked.
Pausing momentarily before answering, the operative responded that the first objective was to respond to any strikes that came their way. The second long-term goal was “to perhaps push forward to the Galilee.”
“To enter Israel?” the interrogator asked, receiving an answer in the affirmative.
“That was the plan if there was fighting.”
The remark on a plan to invade the Galilee was consistent with briefings from the army in recent weeks in which they revealed that days after Hamas’s October 7 mass onslaught in southern Israel, thousands of terrorists had been positioned near the Lebanon border in a plan to storm the Galilee and unleash similar carnage there.
Pivoting suddenly, the interrogator once more demanded to know why those stationed in the south — supposedly in preparation for an anticipated invasion of Israel — had all seemingly fled.
“After the assassination of Hassan [Nasrallah], I didn’t see any of them,” the operative responded, referring to the massive strikes in Beirut on September 27 in which the Hezbollah leader was killed.
The capture of Hezbollah forces has not been common. On Sunday, the military announced for the first time since the ground offensive began it had captured a Hezbollah fighter in an underground bunker.
Hezbollah has been badly hit over the last month, starting with sabotage attacks that saw pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to terror operatives explode in two waves on September 17 and 18, killing at least 39 people and injuring thousands more. The attack has been widely blamed on Israel, despite it staying silent on the matter.
Days later, Israel launched a major offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah on September 23 with the aim of allowing residents of northern Israel to return to homes they had been forced to evacuate during a year of cross-border rocket fire from Lebanon.
The attacks on northern Israel over the last year have resulted in the deaths of 28 civilians. In addition, 38 IDF soldiers and reservists have died in cross-border skirmishes and in the ensuing ground operation launched in southern Lebanon late last month.
Across the border, the Lebanese government has said that strikes have killed at least 2,309 people in Lebanon over the last year, mainly in the last few weeks. The number includes at least 960 Hezbollah terrorists the IDF said it had killed in the last year but likely includes many more as the numbers of slain Hezbollah members have not been consistently updated since Israel ramped up operations against it.
Speaking Tuesday, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said Hezbollah was hiding the number of fighters killed by Israel.
“This indicates that it is in distress and that we need to intensify our efforts against the terror group,” he was quoted saying in a statement issued by the IDF.
A graphic released by the military showed how it has eliminated almost all of Hezbollah’s top brass.
מצורף עץ חיסולי הפורום הבכיר של ארגון הטרור חיזבאללה, שהוצג במהלך ראיון של דובר צה״ל, תא״ל דניאל הגרי, לערוץ אלחורה pic.twitter.com/vQdDUx02OJ
— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) October 15, 2024
The IDF also confirmed on Tuesday that it had killed a top commander in Hezbollah’s aerial unit who was responsible for launching drones at Israel for both intelligence-gathering and attack purposes.
The strike several days ago in Nabatieh took out Khader Al-Abed Bahja, head of the northern Litani region of the aerial unit, the army said.
The news came two days after a drone struck an IDF training base, killing four soldiers and injuring dozens more. The IDF did not say, however, whether Bahja’s unit was tied to that attack.
US pushing for Israel to limit Beirut strikes
Attempting to counter the image of an organization that has been splintered by Nasrallah’s assassination, Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem warned in a speech Tuesday that the only solution to the current war would be a ceasefire, and claimed that his terror group would not be defeated.
“Since the Israeli enemy targeted all of Lebanon, we have the right from a defensive position to target any place” in Israel, “whether the center, the north or the south,” Qassem said.
“I am telling the Israeli home front: The solution is a ceasefire… the resistance (Hezbollah) will not be defeated because this is its land,” he added, claiming that the Iran-backed terror group had adopted a new calculation so that Israel feels “pain.”
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati also raised the matter of a ceasefire on Tuesday.
In a statement distributed by his office, Mikati said that he had received guarantees from the US that Israeli strikes in Beirut would be reduced, appearing to confirm recent Hebrew media reports that pressure from President Joe Biden had led to an agreement by Israel to cut back on strikes in the Lebanese capital.
While Israeli officials have vehemently denied agreeing to such a demand, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Tuesday that the US did indeed raise concerns over the bombing campaign in Beirut, and warned that Washington would continue to watch very carefully.
“We’ve told Israel very directly that we oppose their near-daily strikes here in densely populated areas in Beirut,” White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said in a separate briefing.
“We understand that they’re conducting targeted operations designed to go after Hezbollah infrastructure, and we recognize that they have a right to do that, but they also have a commensurate responsibility to do it in a way that doesn’t threaten the lives of civilians, UN peacekeepers or members of the Lebanese armed forces who have suffered some casualties here,” Kirby said. “It’s unacceptable, and we’ve pressed the Israelis for more details about that.”
Israel has not struck the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold known as Dahiyeh, since late last week after hitting the area on a near-nightly basis for several weeks in attacks targeting Hezbollah operatives which the Lebanese health ministry said also killed scores of people not connected to the terror group.
Mikati did not provide further details on the assurances he had received from the US on the matter, but said that Washington was “serious about pressuring Israel to reach a ceasefire.”
He told AFP on Tuesday that international efforts were still underway to reach a ceasefire that would put an end to the year-long hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, which began when the terror group started launching attacks following the October 7, 2023, terror onslaught carried out by Hamas in southern Israel.
He reiterated his previously pledged commitment to implement UN Resolution 1701, which calls for the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers to be the only armed forces deployed south of the Litani River.
“Currently we have 4,500 soldiers in south Lebanon, and we wish to add to them between 7,000 and 11,000,” Mikati said, adding that his cash-strapped government would start by recruiting an additional 1,500 troops, and that as soon as any ceasefire is agreed they would move in soldiers from elsewhere in Lebanon.
“The Lebanese state is ready to impose its sovereignty over all of Lebanese territory,” he said.
‘We entered a war which is not for us’
While Israeli strikes have been concentrated mostly on south and east Lebanon, in addition to the capital, a deadly strike in northern Lebanon on Monday raised fears of a widening conflict.
Israel said the strike, which was reported to have killed 22 people, struck a Hezbollah target. The United Nations nevertheless called for an independent investigation.
The strike was carried out in Aito, a village in the country’s Christian heartland, far from Hezbollah’s main area of influence.
As rescue workers rummaged through the debris on Tuesday, they found the body of a child, and later a small leg and other remains that they put together in a white bag. The Lebanese military watched as a bulldozer cleared heaps of twisted steel, destroyed olive trees, and crushed rocks.
Speaking to AFP in the aftermath of the strike, a resident of the village blamed Hezbollah for dragging Lebanon into a war it didn’t want.
“We entered a war which is not for us, we are all bearing its consequences,” she said.
Demining activity in Golan may indicate widening front
In what may be an indication that Israel is seeking to expand its ground operations against Hezbollah whilst bolstering defenses, security sources and analysts said its troops have cleared landmines and established new barriers on the frontier between the Golan Heights and a demilitarized strip bordering Syria.
The move suggests Israel may seek to strike Hezbollah for the first time from further east along Lebanon’s border, at the same time creating a secure area from which it can freely reconnoiter the terror group and prevent infiltration, the sources said.
While demining activity has been reported, sources who spoke to Reuters — including a Syrian soldier stationed in south Syria, a Lebanese security official and a UN peacekeeping official — revealed additional unreported details that showed Israel was moving the fence separating the DMZ toward the Syrian side and digging more fortifications in the area.