The IDF on Tuesday announced it has destroyed the largest Hezbollah tunnel city in all of southern Lebanon, built with significant aid from Iran.
According to the IDF, the network could have housed and provided weapons, communications, and other operational infrastructure for thousands of Radwan Forces elite terrorists in the area.
During its 2024 invasion of Lebanon, the IDF found three tunnel city networks, but this one, near Kantara, was by the largest.
Some 11 kilometers from the border, in southern Lebanon, Kantara sits roughly parallel to the midpoint between Israeli moshavim Margaliyot and Dovev in Upper Galilee.
The IDF informed that the tunnel was two kilometers long and 10 km. wide; photos show that it had spread out in several different directions under numerous other villages in the area.
Tunnel network even larger than described
In fact, the tunnel network was even larger than originally described, as its description only included the large western portion of the network.
There is an almost parallel eastern tunnel network, which Hezbollah probably intended to connect to the western network at some point.
That eastern network is also relatively large and is being destroyed.
Division 36, including the 7th Armored Brigade 7, the 1st “Golani” Brigade, commandos, and the “Yahalom” Special Operations Engineering Unit, were all involved in extended fighting moving from east to west in Lebanon from Rav Talatin (the 30-km. buffer zone established by Israel) to the village of A-Taibah and eventually to Kantara.
According to the IDF, 36 has been the last division still penetrating into new areas. Other IDF divisions have shifted in the last week or so to cleaning out Hezbollah weapons and lookout posts.
Now, Division 36 will also likely shift its mission to clearing.
The IDF said that Kantara has complex topography in that it is connected to portions of southern Lebanon closer to the Israeli border, as well as to Hezbollah forces east of the Wadi Saluki.
Further, the IDF said that in this area, it faced a complex mix of short-range close-quarters fighting and long-range attacks by Hezbollah from positions further north in Lebanon.
Long-range attacks have included rockets, anti-tank missiles, and drones, including First Person View (FPV) drones, which use technology along with manual operators, making them harder to jam and much more deadly.
A number of recent incidents in which IDF soldiers were killed or wounded resulted from such FPV attacks.
The IDF admitted that it does not yet have a full response to FPV attacks, though, in general, it has improved its anti-drone defenses since 2023.
One tactic that it has tried is using Israeli intelligence to more widely target all aspects of the FPV drone ecosystem, from materials used to make the drones to operations centers and to tracking and killing drone operators even when they are not using the drones at a specific moment.
The area of Kantara has been one of Hezbollah’s main fallback positions for storing enough infrastructure for an invasion of northern Israel after it lost its first line of defense of southern Lebanese villages to Israel in the fall of 2024.
Regarding evidence of Iranian involvement in building the Kantara tunnel network, the IDF said that it had evidence of Iranian funding and planning, including certain modes of building and operating the tunnel, which are uniquely Iranian in terms of being at a higher level of professionalism compared to other Hezbollah tunnels.
Iranian weapons discovered in tunnel network
In addition, the IDF found trademark Iranian weapons in the tunnel network.
Although the IDF knew about the tunnel’s general existence in 2024, the military said the conditions had not been ripe for such a deep penetration into southern Lebanon, with most of the IDF at that time not surpassing a distance of three to five kilometers.
However, even knowing that the tunnel network existed in the Kantara area, the IDF said that the special forces Yahalom tunnel location unit had required over a week to find all of the various entrances of the network and fully map them out.
Apparently, Hezbollah expended more energy than usual in cleverly hiding the network under a variety of civilian structures.
The IDF used hundreds of tons of explosives to destroy the tunnel, which at points reaches 25 meters or over in depth.
It said that Division 36 had not seen many Lebanese civilians returning to its area of control. This is likely because the area where Division 36 operates has seen continued fighting even this week.
In contrast, civilians have returned to areas that have gotten quieter, and the IDF said it was possible that with fighting concluding in the Kantara area, more civilians might begin to return.