Hezbollah and the Shi’ite Amal Movement have been using ambulances for transporting terrorists and weapons in southern Lebanon, the IDF’s spokesperson for Arabic media, Avichay Adraee, said on Tuesday.
According to Adraee, the two terrorist movements use ambulances belonging to the Islamic Health Organization, a Shi’ite healthcare organization closely affiliated with Hezbollah. The organization says on its website that it has always “provided services for the activity of the Hezbollah fighters against the Zionist occupation.”
According to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, more than 20 of the organization’s operatives have been killed while fighting as part of Hezbollah. Several members of the organization have been killed in the clashes between Israel and Hezbollah since October as well.
Adraee said on Tuesday that the IDF had discovered that Hezbollah and Amal were using a yellow ambulance operated by Sheet Cargo, headed by Hassam Muhammad Sheet, who also runs the local government in Kfarkela.
The IDF noted that the ambulance traveled abnormally between Hezbollah sites after the sites were bombed, even when no people were injured, as well for a long period after the strikes.
Two individuals who operated the ambulance, Musa and Muhammad Sheet, were claimed as Hezbollah members after they were killed in an Israeli strike in January.
In 2022, Adraee announced that a man named Hatem Sheet, also a resident of Kfarkela, ran drug and weapons smuggling operations from his home for Hezbollah. It is unclear if Sheet is related to the Sheet involved in the latest exposé.
Adraee added on Tuesday that Hussein Khalil, a resident of the town of Baraachit who was killed in Israeli strike in Blida and identified as a member of the Islamic Health Organization, was photographed in the past wearing the badge of Amal.
Hezbollah's use of civilian organizations for terrorism
This isn’t the first time that Hezbollah has been caught using civilian organizations for military purposes.
Hezbollah has repeatedly been accused of using the Green Without Borders environmental organization as a front for terrorist activities near the Lebanese-Israeli border.
In 2017, then head of the IDF's Intelligence Directorate, Herzi Halevi, stated that Hezbollah had established outposts marked with the logo of Green Without Borders along the border. According to the IDF, the organization is partially funded by Hezbollah.
The Green Without Borders organization was sanctioned by the US in August of last year for its ties to Hezbollah’s terrorist activities.