The Israeli military has dealt a decisive blow to the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group in Lebanon, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Sunday.
“We have defanged the snake,” the Israeli defense minister declared while visiting a military outpost in southern Lebanon. The minister warned that the Israeli armed forces would “crush its head” if Hezbollah did not pull back to the Litani River, which separates southern Lebanon from the rest of the country.
The recently set-up Syrian buffer zone gives Israel a strategic advantage over the Iranian proxy terror group in southern Lebanon.
“If Hezbollah does not withdraw beyond the Litani River and tries to violate the cease-fire, we will crush its head,” he warned. “We will not allow Hezbollah operatives to return to the villages of the south and re-establish the terror infrastructure that will pose a threat to the settlements of the north, and we will ensure the IDF’s ability to continue to fully enforce the reality on the ground.”
The defense minister made those remarks as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continues to eliminate Hezbollah fighters and destroy the terrorist infrastructure in south Lebanon — in accordance with the ceasefire which came into effect nearly four weeks ago.
An Israeli armored brigade operating in southern Lebanon uncovered and destroyed a Hezbollah terrorist base and weapons depot, the IDF announced Sunday.
Israeli “combat engineering soldiers located a combat compound containing eight weapon storage facilities both above and below ground, connected by an underground infrastructure,” the military said in a press release. “In the compound, the troops located communication and electrical equipment, anti-tank missiles, explosives, and computers.”
On October 1, 2024, the Israeli military launched a ground operation to flush Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon. On October 8, 2023, the Lebanon-based terrorist group began firing rockets and drones at Israel, killing at least 72 Israelis, including 12 children playing on a soccer field in late July. More than 70,000 Israeli civilians have been forced to flee their homes due to relentless Hezbollah cross-border attacks.
The IDF reportedly eliminated another senior Hamas terrorist as the army expands its operation in northern Gaza, Israeli media reported Sunday.
An Israeli airstrike killed Muhammad Abu Askar, former spokesman for Hamas’s Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades, a terror outfit, media reports say. “Israel’s public broadcaster KAN News reported, citing Palestinian reports, that Hamas official Muhammad Abu Askar, who previously served as spokesperson to the terror group’s military wing, had been killed in a strike in Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip,” the Jerusalem Post reported.
The IDF ground forces eliminated several Hamas terrorists as they widened their counter-terrorism operation in the Beit Hanoun area of northern Gaza. On Sunday morning, Israeli “troops began operating in the area west of Beit Hanoun. Prior to the entry of ground troops into the area, the IAF and IDF artillery struck terror targets, including Hamas terrorists and terror infrastructure sites,” the Israeli military said in a statement. “So far, the ground troops have eliminated a number of terrorists and dismantled terrorist infrastructure sites in the area.”
On Saturday night, Israeli fighter jets struck a Hamas terrorist commander center in northeastern Gaza. “Overnight, … the IAF [Israeli Air Force] conducted a precise strike on Hamas terrorists who were operating inside a command and control center in the area of Daraj Tuffah in the Gaza Strip,” the IDF said in a statement Sunday.
The military undertook measures to “mitigate the risk of harming civilians” as it targeted the Hamas terror base located inside a former school, the IDF assured. “The command and control center, which was embedded inside a compound that previously served as the ‘Musa bin Nusayr’ School, was used by the terrorists to plan and execute terrorist attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel,” the military disclosed Sunday.
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