Blast shakes southern Lebanon as Israel destroys underground Hezbollah base
The Israeli destruction of the underground base fueled concerns among residents about a deepening Israeli military presence and an expansion of military operations in southern Lebanon.
BEIRUT — A huge explosion sent shock waves across southern Lebanon overnight, as the Israeli military said it had destroyed an underground Hezbollah base in a strategically significant area of Israel’s conflict with the Iran-backed militia.
The blast lit up the sky with a sudden orange flash and tore through the Ali al-Taher ridge, a commanding hilltop about 6 miles from the border between Israel and Lebanon that Israeli forces captured this month.
Lebanese and Israeli officials say Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia supported by Iran, established a major underground installation beneath the ridge. Israel says the complex had for years served as a command center for planning and launching attacks against it. The ridge overlooks much of southeastern Lebanon, including Nabatiyeh, one of the country’s largest cities.
“The explosion caused massive sounds in Nabatiyeh,” Abbas Fakhereddine, the city’s mayor, said Friday. “We felt the buildings shake.”
The explosion generated ground waves that were likened to an earthquake measuring 4.2 on the Richter scale, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported, citing the country’s National Center for Geophysics. Videos shared on social media showed the explosion lighting up the night late Thursday.
The Israeli destruction of the underground base at the ridge fueled concerns among residents about a deepening Israeli military presence and an expansion of military operations in southern Lebanon. Israel has in recent days and weeks carried out strikes and widespread demolitions of buildings and civilian infrastructure across southern Lebanon, according to local officials and human rights groups.
The Israeli military said in a statement Thursday that it had located dozens of rockets, missiles, drones, machine guns, and explosive devices inside the underground base. The complex also included a Hezbollah command center, weapons storage rooms, and living quarters, the military said.
On Friday, Hezbollah officials disputed the significance of the ridge and accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel of exaggerating the importance of the operation for political gain before elections next month.
A Hezbollah media official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, downplayed the site’s importance to the group and rejected claims that the facility contained advanced missiles or significant military infrastructure.
Under a U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement reached in June, Israel is expected to gradually pull its forces back from areas it occupies in southern Lebanon, with the Lebanese armed forces deploying there to establish security and enable displaced residents to return. That arrangement is closely linked to the Lebanese government’s efforts to disarm Hezbollah, a process that is likely to prove difficult, given the government’s limited ability to control the powerful militia.
On Friday, Lebanon’s General Directorate of State Security said in a statement it was resuming government patrols and reestablishing checkpoints in Nabatiyeh, in coordination with other security agencies and the Lebanese army, to protect the city and strengthen public confidence and safety.
Some residents of southern Lebanon, along with political and security observers, have expressed anger that Hezbollah did not hand over the ridge to the Lebanese army and security services, arguing that the group had allowed a strategic position to be lost to Israel rather than place it under Lebanese state control.
Moustafa Bayram, a former labor minister aligned with Hezbollah, said Israel’s decision to destroy the site was “an attempt to terrorize us and escalate the war.”
This article originally appeared in the New York Times.
