With sixth Hezbollah tunnel discovered Saturday afternoon, Israel declared victory and announced the completion of Operation Northern Shield on Sunday.
By David Isaac, World Israel News
With the sixth Hezbollah tunnel discovered Saturday afternoon, Israel declared victory and announced the completion of Operation Northern Shield on Sunday.
The tunnel, the second discovered coming from the Lebanese town of Ramieh, went 180 feet deep and crossed 2,624 feet of Lebanese territory and dozens of yards into Israel. Israel reported the tunnel’s discovery to UNIFIL, the U.N. observer force responsible for ensuring that southern Lebanon remains free of hostile forces. The tunnel wasn’t operational or a threat to Israel’s citizens, Israel’s military says.
“We have now exposed all attack tunnels dug by Hezbollah from Lebanon into Israel,” the Israel Defense Forces tweeted on Sunday.
The Army said, “In the coming days we’ll investigate the new tunnel and carry out actions to neutralize it. In tandem we’ll seize a number of locations in Lebanese territory from which Hezbollah digs tunnels that have not yet crossed into Israel.
“We’ll continue our engineering actions along the border and tracking Hezbollah’s underground activities. There is no underground infrastructure now that allows crossing from Lebanon into Israel. We’ll remain fully in the north despite the operation’s completion in order to work in the region.”
The IDF also said that the “operation stripped from Hezbollah the unique offensive ability that it had built for years as part of an attack plan into Israeli territory that it wanted to conduct to create emergency situations.”
The Army reiterated that it held Lebanon responsible for all activities that took place in its territory and thanked the residents of Israel’s north for helping it achieve the operation’s goals.