 "Inside Hezbollah’s complex underground tunnels as fighting with Israel intensifies")
Israel’s ground invasion in Lebanon has entered its second week.
The Israeli forces and the Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese terror outfit backed by Iran, clashed along southern Lebanon on Wednesday.
This, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Lebanon it could face ‘Gaza-like’ destruction.
“You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza,” Netanyahu said in a video address directed to the people of Lebanon.
“I say to you, the people of Lebanon: Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.”
But Israel’s forces have not had an easy go of it.
At least 15 Israeli soldiers and two civilians have been killed since the beginning off the ground operation.
Hezbollah, much like Hamas, has an extensive tunnel network.
Let’s take a closer look:
As per Hezbollah’s tunnels are thought to far more complex and deeper than the ones in Gaza.
The tunnels are thought to go on for hundreds of kilometres and crucial to the terror group’s ability to shift weapons, unveil attacks and escape aerial reconnaissance.
The Cradle quoted French newspaper Liberation as reporting that Hezbollah’s tunnel network is ‘remarkably sophisticated’ and is big enough to even reach Syria.
The outlet quoted a report by the Alma Research and Education Centre as saying that the tunnels were originally constructed in the 1980s and 1990s by Iran and North Korea.
Nicholas Blanford, a Beirut-based Hezbollah expert and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said he believed Hezbollah’s tunnel networks began in the mid-1980s when Israeli troops withdrew from most of Lebanon to an occupied strip along the southern border.
“It’s been widely understood for a long time that Hezbollah has extensive tunnel networks… used to store munitions and to serve as low-signature missile (and) rocket launch pads,” he said.
The Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation (KOMID) is thought to be behind the construction of these tunnels.
Dr Daphne Richemond-Barak, professor at Israel’s Reichman University, and author of Underground Warfare, told Daily Mail, “Hezbollah’s tunnels are built to be massive invasion tunnels and are reminiscent of what North Korea planned to do to South Korea. We have evidence that the North Koreans met with Hezbollah – and the results are clear here.”
The tunnels are also thought to have silos that can launch missiles like the Fateh 110.
A 2021 report by Alma said both helped build up the network of tunnels in the aftermath of the 2006 war.
Alma said Iranian companies, including those linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), helped build the tunnels.
As per Daily Mail, Alma said the tunnels are ‘significantly larger than those that Hamas has built in Gaza – known as the Hamas metro.
They are thought to have “underground command and control rooms, weapons and supply depots, field clinics and specified designated shafts used to fire missiles of all types.”
In 2019, Israel said it had uncovered and destroyed Hezbollah “attack tunnels” that were dug into Israeli territory from Lebanon. Former leader Hassan Nasrallah said at the time that the group had had the capability “for years” to cross into northern Israel.
The Israeli military has shared videos of what it says are underground tunnels chiselled into rock used by Hezbollah. The tunnels are used to store weapons and stage attacks. One tunnel stretched from Lebanon into Israeli territory, according to the military.
An Israeli raid on a southern Lebanese village Ayta ash Shab uncovered dozens of underground shafts and tunnels including some as deep as 80 feet.
The tunnels has rocket launchers and even nearly a dozen ammunition stores.
The group in August published footage that appeared to show its fighters driving trucks with rocket launchers through tunnels.
The footage, 4 minutes and 35 seconds long, was one of the latest in a series of videos by the group flaunting its purported military capabilities.
The newest video depicts fighters riding motorcycles, working on laptops and driving around a dozen trucks through the rocky tunnels.
At the end of the video, two large metal doors open to reveal a wooded area and sky, indicating the passages are underground. One of the trucks tilts its bed back to point its cargo of rockets towards the opening.
The video identified the facility as being named “Imad 4”, an apparent reference to Imad Mughniyeh, a shadowy Hezbollah commander killed in 2008.
Posters of Mughniyeh were shown on the tunnel walls in the footage, alongside others that showed Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Iran’s slain Quds Force commander, Qasem Soleimani.
Israeli officials have said Hezbollah’s military infrastructure is tightly meshed into the villages and communities of southern Lebanon, with ammunition and missile launcher pads stored in houses throughout the area.
Israel has been pounding some of those villages for months to degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities.
Confirmed details on the tunnel network remain scarce.
Israel has already struggled to root out Hamas commanders and self-reliant fighting units from the tunnels criss-crossing Gaza.
What do experts say?
“It is one of our biggest challenges in Gaza, and it is certainly something we could meet in Lebanon,” said Carmit Valensi, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, a think-tank.
Krieg said that unlike Gaza, where most tunnels are manually dug into a sandy soil, the tunnels in Lebanon had been dug deep in mountain rock.
“They are far less accessible than in Gaza and even less easy to destroy.”
Krieg told The Cradle that Hezbollah’s tunnels have tactical and operational but not strategic value.
“That is to say that while the tunnel system is Hamas’ center of gravity in Gaza, the tunnel system in southern Lebanon is merely a force multiplier for Hezbollah that provides it with a military edge vis-à-vis the IDF infantry,” Krieg said.
Krieg said the deepest tunnels are all but invulnerable to airstrikes.
He warned that destroying the tunnels would not remove the threat from Hezbollah.
“Since the tunnels are not as strategically important to Hezbollah as they are in Gaza for Hamas, the destruction of the tunnel system is not as problematic for Hezbollah.”
Richemond-Barak added to Daily Mail, “here is electricity and ventilation. Some contain sleeping quarters, with mattresses and fridges and kitchen. There are also military bases with all the requisite equipment. It’s all geared toward being able to stay underground for prolonged periods.”
“I have no doubt that the ground invasion into Lebanon right now is linked to the tunnels,” she added.
India Today quoted experts as comparing the potential land invasion of southern Lebanon to the Battle of Okinawa – which heavily favoured those defending the terrain.
Blanford said a Hezbollah video released showing underground tunnels and missile launchers could be a “warning” to Israel.
Blanford said Hezbollah “probably wanted to remind” Israel that it can “unleash far more powerful weaponry” should Israel’s counter-attack be too strong.
Blanford told The Cradle that “tunnels are still very important for Hezbollah whether they are cross-border tunnels or part of the tunnel/bunker networks it has established across south Lebanon and elsewhere.”
“They remain a strategic priority.”
For Lebanese retired brigadier-general Mounir Shehadeh, the video showed “how deep, how large and how complex (the tunnels) are, and how difficult or even impossible it would be for Israel to reach them”.
Military analyst Hisham Jaber, a retired Lebanese general, said little was known about Hezbollah’s “top secret” underground bunkers and tunnels.
The “Imad 4” facility is probably one of dozens, he said, adding that “south Lebanon’s mountains and hilltops are ideal for digging (facilities) that are protected because they are at the heart of a mountain”.
“Warplanes cannot reach these facilities,” Jaber told AFP, and fighters could remain inside well-provisioned tunnels for months.
Israel could “keep on destroying Lebanon for months without ever reaching” the bunkers, he added.
Orna Mizrahi, a Hezbollah expert at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, said Israel has known about the underground facilities “for a while” and has experience dealing with Hamas tunnels in Gaza.
Daniel Meier, head of the Middle East masters programme at Sciences Po Grenoble, said Hezbollah’s tunnel usage during its 2006 war with Israel, especially in the border town of Bint Jbeil, put heavy pressure on Israel “despite its air supremacy”.
After that, Hezbollah began building more complex underground facilities and tunnels, experts told AFP.
What is Israel doing?
The Israeli military began what they called a “limited, localized and targeted ground raids” in southern Lebanon on October 1. The same day, the military said that it had carried out dozens of secretive cross-border operations to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure over the past year. The aim, Israel says, is to allow its displaced residents to return home.
A military official said that thousands of Israeli troops are currently operating along the roughly 100-kilomter-long border, clearing the area just along the border to try to remove the launch pads where Hezbollah fires rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles into Israeli towns, as well as infrastructure they say would allow for an October 7-style invasion of Israel.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the military’s strategy, said the troops haven’t ventured deep inside Lebanon so far, and have conducted operations from distances of a few hundred meters (yards) up to 2 to 3 kilometers into Lebanese territory.
As per Longwarjournal.org, Israel has demolished Hezbollah’s underground tunnels including one near Zarit which went into Israel.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on October 8, 2023, a day after Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, attacked southern Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza.
Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire almost every day since, coming close to a full-fledged war on several occasions but stepping back from the brink until this month.
With inputs from agencies
 "Russian drones over Poland: Trump’s tepid reaction a wake-up call for Nato?")
 "As Russia pushes east, Ukraine faces mounting pressure to defend its heartland")
 "Why Mossad was not on board with Israel’s strike on Hamas in Qatar")
 "Turkey: Erdogan's police arrest opposition mayor Hasan Mutlu, dozens officials in corruption probe")
 "Russian drones over Poland: Trump’s tepid reaction a wake-up call for Nato?")
 "As Russia pushes east, Ukraine faces mounting pressure to defend its heartland")
 "Why Mossad was not on board with Israel’s strike on Hamas in Qatar")
 "Turkey: Erdogan's police arrest opposition mayor Hasan Mutlu, dozens officials in corruption probe")
