IDF airstrikes ‘set Hezbollah back 20 years,’ says US official

‘We are the closest we’ve been to a regional war,’ warns American official, as conflict between Israel and Hezbollah continues to escalate, with IDF airstrikes sending the terrorist group ‘back 20 years.’

By World Israel News Staff

A massive wave of Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah missile and rocket depots across southern and eastern Lebanon Monday caused massive damage to the Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group, an American official said, setting its operations back decades.

Speaking with CNN in a report published Tuesday, a U.S. official said that a string of recent Israeli actions against Hezbollah have seriously degraded the terror group’s operational capabilities.

Last Tuesday and Wednesday, thousands of hand-held radios and pagers issued by Hezbollah to its operatives detonated simultaneously, killing dozens and injuring thousands.

On Friday, an Israeli airstrike on a Hezbollah position in Beirut killed 16 members of the terror group’s elite Radwan Force, including two of the unit’s senior commanders.

Yesterday, following a string of massive rocket attacks on northern Israel, Israel Air Force jets bombed hundreds of Hezbollah missile and rocket depots – many of them concealed in private homes – along the Israeli frontier in southern Lebanon and in eastern Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley.

Lebanon’s health ministry claimed that at least 492 died in the airstrikes, with 1,645 reported injured.

“They’ve probably been taken 20 years backwards,” a second U.S. official said after Monday’s aerial campaign.

Since its 2006 war with Israel, Hezbollah amassed a significant arsenal of rockets and missiles, ranging from shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles to cruise missiles.

Prior to the outbreak of fighting on the Israel-Lebanon frontier on October 8th, Hamas is estimated to possess some 150,000 rockets and missiles in its stockpiles.

Hezbollah rocket, missile, and mortar attacks on Israeli border towns have forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents of northern Israel, with some 70,000 Israeli citizens still internally displaced.