A portrait of the assassinated Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, during a ceremony marking Ashoura, in the southern suburb of Beirut, on July 6, 2025. (Credit: Anwar Amro/AFP.)
The Israeli army said Wednesday that its soldiers entered southern Lebanon to carry out "special and targeted operations" to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure a few kilometers from the Israeli border.
"Following intelligence information and the identification of Hezbollah terrorist weapons and infrastructure in several areas of southern Lebanon, soldiers launched special and targeted operations to dismantle them and prevent Hezbollah from re-establishing itself in the region," the Israeli army said in a statement.
When asked by AFP to confirm whether this was the first ground operation by the Israeli army in Lebanon since the cease-fire reached in November 2024, the army did not immediately respond.
Several operations are described by the Israeli army, primarily the location and seizure of weapons "on the ridge of Jabal Blat" and in "the Labbouneh area," both located two to three kilometers from Israeli towns on the other side of the border. The Israeli army accompanied its statement with a video — which AFP is unable to authenticate — showing soldiers moving at night through a rural area, which it presents as southern Lebanon.
Israel continues to bomb Lebanon despite the truce reached in November after a year of hostilities with Hezbollah, saying it is mainly targeting the sites and fighters of the Lebanese movement, but also, on occasion, members of its Palestinian ally, Hamas.
On Tuesday, the Israeli army said it had targeted an activist of the Palestinian Hamas movement in the Tripoli region, in northern Lebanon, Beirut reported three people killed in an Israeli attack near Tripoli.
On Wednesday, the army announced it had killed a commander of Hezbollah's Bader unit in a strike in Babliye, in the Saida district. "The terrorist was responsible for planning the firing of numerous rockets at the State of Israel and the Israeli army. More recently, he tried to rebuild Hezbollah's artillery units in southern Lebanon," said the Israeli army's Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee on X.
Humanitarian convoy reaches Rmeish, Ain Ibl, Dibil despite obstacles
