The Israel Defense Forces blew up a 1.2-mile-long Hezbollah tunnel filled with weapons and supplies near the border, and the explosion was so powerful that it sparked earthquake warnings on Saturday.
The Israeli military said the tunnel was just one of several in southern Lebanon prepared for the elite forces of Hezbollah al-Radwan to one day invade Israel in an attack similar to the October 7 massacre.
Inside the tunnels, Israeli forces found AK-47 rifles, explosives, rocket launchers, sniper rifles, anti-tank guided missiles, and launchers.
The Israeli military said soldiers also found a large amount of food, including canned goods, chocolate and even pickled olives – with enough of the stuff to feed more than 100 fighters.
The base was equipped with electricity and plumbing, in addition to several bedrooms and bathrooms for the terrorists.
Officials said they discovered the tunnel during a 48-hour operation in southern Lebanon, where Israeli forces clashed with Hezbollah fighters stationed near the tunnel system.
After killing the terrorists — along with four other Hezbollah members in a smaller nearby tunnel — the soldiers made their way inside the 1.2-mile underground base.
The tunnel was filled with Hezbollah booby traps and mines, which IDF forces successfully cleared so their forces could investigate.
The Israeli military then lined the tunnel system with about 400 tons of explosives and detonated it on Saturday, with such force that false earthquake alarms were triggered in northern Israel.
Massive seismic activity was detected in 284 communities in Israel and the West Bank, According to the Jerusalem Post.
A similar incident occurred in Russia last month when a Ukrainian drone struck an arms depot in Torobets, and the massive explosion was recorded at seismic monitoring stations across the region.
Besides the tunnel destroyed on Saturday, the IDF allegedly marked at least three Hezbollah tunnels that had been prepared for the group’s alleged “Galilee invasion” operation, which Israel said included a cross-border invasion.
The presence of the tunnels so close to the border constitutes a clear violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the Israel-Lebanon war in 2006 and created a buffer zone along the border in which the IDF and Hezbollah were prohibited from operating.
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