The Israeli armed forces have crossed the Litani River, and are now operating in Beirut and Hezbollah terror strongholds across southern Lebanon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced while visiting the troops on the frontline.
“Our forces have crossed the Litani; they have advanced to controlling positions,” Prime Minister Netanyahu told the troops on Friday. “We are operating in Beirut, in the Beqaa, across the entire width of the front, and we are dealing Hezbollah a crushing blow.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is now operating beyond the Yellow Line, established in keeping with the U.S.-brokered truce in November 2024. The Israeli ground forces are crossing the Litani River, a 90-mile river that runs through southern Lebanon, Israeli media reports. Under a UN resolution passed in 2006, Hezbollah was to be disarmed and ousted from southern Lebanon. For two decades, the Iranian proxy terrorist group has been amassing fighters and building terrorist infrastructure along Israel’s northern border.
The “troops of the IDF’s 36th Division have crossed the Litani River and have advanced toward strategic points in southern Lebanon,” The Times of Israel reported Friday. This comes after Prime Minister Netanyahu, on Tuesday, ordered the “deepening” of the military operation in Lebanon.
Israel’s Ynetnews reported Tuesday that the IDF had “pushed beyond the Litani River and at points beyond the yellow line ceasefire demarcation in some areas to drive Hezbollah terrorists farther north and make it harder for them to launch attack drones at Israeli communities.” Approximately 80,000 residents had to flee their homes after Hezbollah began cross-border attacks on October 8, 2023.
Addressing the frontline troops, Prime Minister Netanyahu observed that “in every contact with them, in every encounter, we are both eliminating Hezbollah and causing them to flee.”
His remarks come a day after the IDF revealed that the Hezbollah command structure has been decimated in recent weeks of fighting. On Thursday, the military announced that “Hezbollah’s most senior field commanders have been eliminated over the past two weeks.” In total, around 800 Hezbollah fighters have been “eliminated since the start of the ceasefire understandings, over seven weeks ago,” the IDF disclosed.
Hezbollah is paying dearly for entering the war at the behest of Iran. While inspecting the forward base on the Syria-Lebanon border, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, revealed on Friday that “more than 7,500 terrorists [have been] eliminated since the start of the war, including 2,500 since the beginning of Operation Roaring Lion,” the Israeli operation that complements the U.S.-led Operation Epic Fury against Iran.
The IDF operation aims to deny Hezbollah the strategic high ground to launch drones, rockets, and even mortar shells towards northern Israeli towns and cities.
“Our objective is clear — to intensify the damage to Hezbollah, push the terror threat away from our civilians, and strengthen the defense of the northern communities,” the chief of Israeli armed forces said. “Even at this moment, our soldiers are advancing and operating with determination, in the air and on the ground.”
The IDF, on Friday, released surveillance footage showing several Hezbollah rockets hitting an Orthodox Church in southern Lebanon.
“Hezbollah launched several rockets that hit the Saint Georges Orthodox Church in southern Lebanon, and hit buildings in the Christian village of Marjaayoun,” the military said. “IDF soldiers are not operating in the area near the church.”
Images on X show the damage done to the church.
Days after eliminating Hamas’s newly appointed Gaza chief, the IDF took out another senior Hamas operative. Imad Hassan Hussein Aslim, deputy commander of the terrorist Gaza Brigade, was killed in an Israeli strike in northern Gaza.
The slain Hamas commander led the Gaza Brigade during the October 7 massacre, the IDF revealed. The military “struck and eliminated the terrorist Imad Hassan Hussein Aslim, the deputy commander of the Gaza Brigade and the commander of the Zeitoun Battalion in Hamas’ Military Wing, who commanded the battalion’s terrorists infiltration into Israeli territory during the brutal October 7th massacre,” the IDF said in a statement on Friday. “In recent years, and particularly during recent times, Aslim has advanced dozens of imminent attacks against IDF soldiers operating in the Gaza Strip, posing an immediate threat to them.”
The strike that killed the Gaza Brigade’s deputy chief took place on Wednesday, coinciding with the elimination of Hamas’s new Gaza chief, Mohammed Odeh. Odeh’s predecessor, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, was neutralized in mid-May.
The IDF used “precise munitions and aerial surveillance” to minimize harm to civilians.
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