Smoke rises over a village in southern Lebanon, following an Israeli house demolition operation on April 27, 2026. (Credit: Jalaa Marey/AFP)
BEIRUT — A Hezbollah military official told Al Jazeera on Monday that the group was planning to "use tactics from the 1980s and activate groups of suicide attackers in order to prevent the [Israeli] enemy from settling" in southern Lebanon.
"Large groups of suicide attackers are deploying in areas occupied [in Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon] according to plans prepared in advance. The mission of these groups is to make direct contact with enemy officers and soldiers in the Lebanese localities that are occupied," he added.
The Israeli army occupies dozens of villages in southern Lebanon and is seeking to establish a "buffer zone" of more than 600 square kilometers deep into Lebanese territory along the border. To this end, it is demolishing numerous homes, neighborhoods, and localities with explosives and bulldozers, despite the truce currently in place. It is also continuing its strikes on and beyond this zone. Hezbollah, for its part, is also claiming daily attacks against positions occupied by Israeli troops in the south, which have resulted in several Israeli casualties.
Hezbollah was founded in 1982 in the context of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon as a movement to resist Israeli occupation and aggression. In its early days, it carried out several suicide bombings against U.S. and Israeli military targets.
The United States blames the group for the 1983 attack on the U.S. Marine barracks stationed near the Port of Beirut.
