The hunt for terrorist command structure in Lebanon continues with the Israeli air force eliminating several top terror operatives in precision strikes within the past twenty-four hours.
The Lebanon-based chiefs of Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist groups were killed in separate Israeli airstrikes.
Hamas, which has been operating under Hezbollah protection, suffered a major blow on Monday when its Lebanon-based chief, Fatah Sharif Abu al Amin, was taken out in an overnight Israeli airstrike.
The Hamas commander, who was also an employee of the UN’s Palestinian agency (UNRWA), was killed in an Israeli strike on the southern Lebanese city of Trye. “Overnight, during a joint IDF and ISA [also known by its acronym Shin Bet] intelligence-based activity, the IAF [Israeli Air Force] struck and eliminated the terrorist Fateh Sherif, Head of the Lebanon Branch in the Hamas terrorist organization,” the Israeli military announced Monday morning.
“Sherif was responsible for coordinating Hamas’ terror activities in Lebanon with Hezbollah operatives. He was also responsible for Hamas’ efforts in Lebanon to recruit operatives and acquire weapons,” the IDF statement said. “He led the Hamas terrorist organization’s force build-up efforts in Lebanon and operated to advance Hamas’ interests in Lebanon, both politically and militarily.”
The slain terror chief was ‘temporarily suspended’ by the UN for cheering the massacre of innocent Israelis on October 7. “Al Amin who was quick to praise the Hamas massacre on October 7 was described as the terror group’s leader in Lebanon and a member of its international leadership. He was also employed by the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees UNRWA and was chairman of its teacher’s union,” the Israeli news outlet YNET noted.
The head of the Lebanon-based PFLP, an Iran-funded Marxist-Jihadist terror group, and several of his associates were killed in the latest round of Israeli strikes.
“Overnight, during a joint IDF and ISA intelligence-based activity, the IAF struck and eliminated the terrorist Nidal Abdel-Aal, Head of the Lebanon Branch of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) terrorist organization,” the Israel military said in a press release Monday. “The terrorist Imad Odeh, who was the Head of PFLP’s Military Office in Lebanon, was eliminated alongside him.”
“Abdel-Aal led PFLP’s efforts to plan and carry out terror attacks against the State of Israel and directed the organization’s terror activities in Judea and Samaria. He operated to establish terror infrastructure in Judea and Samaria to use in attacks on Israeli targets,” the IDF disclosed.
The slain PFLP commander was behind last year’s terror attack in Israel’s Judea and Samaria region. “Abdel-Aal directed the bus bombing attack in Beitar Illit on March 9, 2023, and the shooting attack from a passing vehicle at the Huwara Junction on March 25, 2023, during which two IDF soldiers were injured,” the Jerusalem Post recalled.
Three other senior operatives of the Communist-Jihadist terror group were killed in Israeli strikes. “The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) says in a statement that three of its leaders were killed in an Israeli strike that targeted Beirut’s Kola district after midnight on Monday,” The Times of Israel reported Monday.
IDF troops entered Hezbollah terror tunnels in a bid to gather intelligence ahead of a possible ground incursion into Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon, The Wall Street Journal claimed Monday.
“Israeli special forces have been carrying out small, targeted raids into southern Lebanon, gathering intelligence and probing ahead of a possible broader ground incursion that could come as soon as this week, people familiar with the matter said,” the WSJ reported.
“The raids, which have included entering Hezbollah’s tunnels located along the border, have occurred recently as well as over the past months, part of the broader effort by Israel to degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities along the border dividing Israel and Lebanon, the people said,” the business daily added.
The operation by elite Israeli forces could be a precursor to a full-fledged military offensive against the Hezbollah terror group, recent Israeli media reports suggest. “Repeated incursions into Hezbollah’s underground tunnel system in South Lebanon” was “aimed to gather intelligence and diminish the terror group’s military capabilities ahead of a possible ground offensive,” YNET reported Monday.
Hezbollah’s tunnel network in southern Lebanon is more extensive and more sophisticated than Hamas’ underground terror infrastructure in Gaza. Hezbollah’s underground web of terror tunnels is far bigger than Hamas’s ‘Gaza metro’, which is estimated to be over 300-miles-long. The Times of Israel in January published an intelligence assessment that “the cumulative length of Hezbollah’s tunnel network in south Lebanon amounts to hundreds of kilometers.”
Hezbollah’s vast underground network of tunnel shafts, command centers, and weapons depots has been financed by the Iranian regime and built by North Korean mining companies.
Amid speculations over a possible Israeli ground operation against Hezbollah, President Joe Biden on Monday renewed the call for an immediate ceasefire.
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