The combat between Israeli special forces and Hizballah focused on secret Hizballah tunnels at Maroun er Ras

Two Israeli troops killed in fierce battle with Hizballah in S. Lebanon Wednesday. One is identified as 1st Sgt. Yonatan Hadasi, 21, Kibbutz Merhavia. DEBKAfile’s military sources: The combat between Israeli special forces and Hizballah focused on secret Hizballah tunnels at Maroun er Ras
July 19, 2006, 6:40 PM (GMT+02:00)

DEBKAfile’s military sources report the epic battle evolved from a small Israeli special forces operation just inside Lebanon at noon Wednesday, July 19, to blow up Hizballah positions and destroy small fortified tunnels riddling the hills around Maroun er Ras opposite the Israeli town of Safed. Hizballah suffered an unknown number of losses. Reinforcements and medical teams crossed the border and the fighting spreads. DEBKAfile’s military sources report the epic battle evolved from a small Israeli special forces operation just inside Lebanon at noon Wednesday, July 19, to blow up Hizballah positions and destroy small fortified tunnels riddling the hills around Maroun er Ras opposite the Israeli town of Safed. The tunnels were assumed to be unoccupied. The Israel force were horrified to find the first packed with Hizballah fighters heavily armed with automatic and anti-tank weapons. The force took casualties in the first blast of fire. At least one tank was blown up. The combat quickly spread to additional sectors of the warfront, joined by Hizballah fighters who sprang out of more secret tunnels which the Israeli force had not known were there. After several hours of heavy exchanges, Israel’s top brass and northern command were forced to look at a number of painful facts: 1. Hizballah had pulled the wool over their eyes. While pretending to be forced back by massive Israeli air attacks, its fighters went underground. When chief of staff Dan Halutz and other generals announced the Hizballah’s first line of fortifications had been flattened, the line had simply dropped out of sight. Building small tunnels over large areas to conceal small fighter squads was a favorite Vietcong ruse against the Americans in the 1960s and 1970s. 2. Hizballah was not fighting a static war out of the tunnels but working to an organized mobile battle plan. As the fighting grew fierce, and the IDF pumped reinforcements into the battle arena, so too did Hizballah, moving them nimbly from tunnel to tunnel in defensive and offensive roles. 3. By afternoon, the engagement had escalated from a contest over the Maroun er Ras tunnels to a decisive battle between Hizballah and the IDF for control of the Lebanese-Israeli border. 4. The two sides were locked in such close combat that the Israelis were constrained from bringing their helicopter gunships into play for decisive strikes against Hizballah fighters. The same difficulty confronted IDF tank guns. 5. In addition to engaging Israeli special forces at three points in south Lebanon from Maroun er Ras in the east to Rosh Hanikra in the west, Hizballah commandos staged incursions of their own. They made repeated attempts to breach the Israeli border and capture stretches of land in Western Galilee. Israeli forces engaged them in heavy battle Wednesday afternoon at Rosh Hanikra. Hizballah commandos are still battering Israeli posts and forces. 6. True to its usual tactics, Hizballah accompanied its ground action with a massive barrage of some 80 rockets in the space of an hour Wednesday afternoon, July 19 against the towns of Nahariya, Haifa, Upper Galilee, the Hula Valley, Tiberias, Safed and Carmiel.