With tensions mounting along their shared border, Israel’s military says Hezbollah is moving fighters and weapons into the villages of south Lebanon, building up a secret network of arms warehouses, bunkers and command posts in preparation for war.
The Israeli military has begun releasing detailed information about what it calls Hezbollah’s new border deployment, four years after a cross-border raid by its guerrillas triggered a 34-day war.
A reminder of the volatility came on Aug. 3, when Lebanese troops fired at Israeli soldiers clearing brush on their side of the border. One Israeli officer was killed. Hezbollah, which is armed by Iran and Syria and is more powerful than the Lebanese military, stayed out of the Aug. 3 fight, but its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, threatened that he would intervene next time.
Currently, 12,000 international peacekeepers conduct, by their own count, up to 340 patrols a day in south Lebanon but are hobbled by a hostile population and rules preventing them from searching private property. — ap