Hezbollah Attack Under Review After Tank Disaster in Southern Lebanon

The IDF continued investigating on Saturday the deadly incident in which four soldiers from Armored Corps Battalion 52 were killed, including the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Dor Ben Shimon, Staff Sgt. Yoav Klein, and two additional fighters whose names have not yet been cleared for publication. The attack happened shortly after midnight on Friday during operations by Division 36 on the Ali Taher ridge south of Nabatieh.

According to an initial inquiry, Hezbollah carried out a combined assault, firing anti-tank missiles, likely Kornet missiles, at the tank and launching at least one explosive drone, possibly carrying anti-tank ordnance. The probe found that an armed drone managed to penetrate the tank through its rear hatch after the Kornet attack and exploded inside it, causing the fatal outcome.

The tank breach is now the main focus of the IDF and Armored Corps investigation. Military officials said the blast was not the result of a technical malfunction. The tank has still not been extracted from southern Lebanon, which is delaying a fuller examination, and the recovery is expected in the coming days.

Earlier, the IDF said the operation in which the tank crew was killed was aimed at taking control of a large Hezbollah underground network on the Ali Taher ridge. A senior IDF officer described it as several underground compounds, one more than a kilometer long and the others a few hundred meters each. He called it an unprecedented strategic infrastructure and said it is Hezbollah’s “nerve center” in southern Lebanon, the main headquarters of the Badr Unit.