On Thursday evening, as the Israeli military operated in western southern Lebanon, a ynet reporter joined reserve commandos from the 551st Brigade reconnaissance and mobility battalion near the village of Majdal Zun, about 7 to 10 kilometers from the border. The area, the article says, was once a Hezbollah staging village and had long served as a launch point for attacks on northern Israel.
The underground site exposed there had been targeted from the air during Operation Northern Arrows in autumn 2024, but the fortified network kept functioning. According to the commanders on site, the month-long operation began with intelligence gathering and airstrikes, then continued on the ground. They said many homes in the village contained weapons systems, communications gear, machine guns, anti-tank missiles, explosives and launch sites.
After a dark walk marked only by green glow sticks, the troops reached a large side entrance that could let vehicles drive in. Inside, they found dozens of dismantled drones laid out like an assembly line, plus a reinforced room containing hundreds of tons of explosives and weapons. A Yaelam officer, Lt. Col. D., said the site included huge blast doors and had taken days to locate. He said the system held Iranian-made drones with wingspans of about half a meter, warheads of roughly 30 kilograms, and ranges of 200 to 500 kilometers.
The military said the tunnel was more than 200 meters long, over 25 meters deep, and included four launch shafts and 12 storage and living rooms. It also said more than 20 Hezbollah fighters were killed there, including about 10 from Radwan, Hezbollah's elite force. After the reporter returned to Israel near midnight, news arrived that four soldiers from the 52nd Armored Battalion had been killed in a separate battle in nearby Tabenin, underscoring the heavy cost of the war.
