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Israeli troops located and destroyed a more than 300-foot-long underground tunnel used by Hezbollah’s Radwan Forces as a terrorist hideout, the IDF said Saturday.
The Israeli military said it discovered the tunnel during operations in southern Lebanon. The IDF has launched a series of strikes aimed at preventing weapons from falling into the hands of Hezbollah, which has attacked Israel for more than a year before a ceasefire was agreed to last month.
“With the assistance of the Yahalom Unit, who investigated and cleared the tunnel route of explosives and threats, the troops located rifles, machine guns, anti-tank missiles, and observation systems inside the tunnel,” the IDF said in a statement.
The IDF said all the weapons were confiscated and destroyed, along with the tunnel itself.
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“An anti-tank missile stockpile and heavy machine gun positions aimed at IDF posts were also found in the vicinity of the tunnel,” the Israeli military added.
The IDF said the underground tunnel route connected to a Hezbollah command center that contained rockets used to fire at Israel during the war, “along with a large number of explosives.”
The United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) called on Thursday for Israeli forces to withdraw from southern Lebanon, claiming Israel had violated the terms of a Nov. 27 ceasefire agreement with Iran-backed Hezbollah, Reuters reported.
Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a U.S.-brokered 60-day ceasefire that calls for a phased Israeli military pullout after more than a year of war, in keeping with a 2006 U.N. Security Council resolution that ended their last major conflict.
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Under the agreement, Hezbollah fighters must leave positions in south Lebanon and move north of the Litani River, which runs about 20 miles north of the border with Israel, along with a full Israeli withdrawal from the south.
UNIFIL’s statement called attention to what it said was the continued destruction by Israeli forces of residential areas, farmland and infrastructure in south Lebanon.
“UNIFIL continues to urge the timely withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces and the deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces (in place of Hezbollah) in southern Lebanon, alongside the full implementation of Resolution 1701 as a comprehensive path toward peace,” the statement said.
The Israeli military told Reuters it was looking in to UNIFIL’s criticism but offered no further comment.
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Under the ceasefire arrangement, Israeli forces can take up to 60 days to pull out of south Lebanon, but neither side can launch offensive operations.
Lebanon’s army told Reuters it was following up with UNIFIL and the committee supervising the ceasefire agreement regarding Israel’s continued operations in southern Lebanon.
UNIFIL said it would continue to monitor the area south of the Litani River to ensure it remains free of armed personnel and weapons, except those that belong to Lebanon’s government and UNIFIL.