Israel continued its offensives in southern Lebanon over the weekend, including operations around Beaufort Castle, which they presently occupy. The IDF reported that those operations involved an attack on Hezbollah fighters at Ali Taher Ridge.
“The soldiers struck the terrorists and eliminated them in order to remove the threat,” was the official statement on the matter. The identities of the slain have yet to be confirmed in any of the statements on the incident.
Top Israeli officials presented the operations near Beaufort Castle as targeted at a Hezbollah infiltration plot, and several major explosions were reported as Israel destroyed structures near the Beaufort area, particular in the village of Qlayaa, where the explosions were so forceful they shattered windows in peoples’ homes.
Crusader-era Beaufort Castle, Nabatieh Governorate, overlooks the surrounding area | Image from Wikimedia
Further south near Kafra, five Lebanese soldiers and several civilians were lightly wounded in an explosion caused by a suspicious object. Early Lebanese military statements blamed the incident on the “Israeli enemy” though as yet it’s uncertain if they placed the object in the first place.
The IDF, for its part, said they were “not aware of any strikes” against those Lebanese soldiers, which neither confirms nor precludes the possibility they’d left some sort of explosive there and the soldiers found it, whether intentionally or not.
Given the amount of destruction the IDF is causing across the south of Lebanon, whether setting fire to homes or flat out blowing them up, if a substantial explosive device was found in the area where they were operating, its not unreasonable to suggest it may well have been an IDF device, though Lebanese officials say an investigation is still ongoing.
