The Israeli military uncovered an underground Hezbollah bunker near its border with Lebanon that was stocked with weapons and motorcycles for a planned invasion of Israel, officials said Monday.
Israel Defense Force spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a video tour of the tunnel that Israeli forces located the subterranean terrorist command center in southern Lebanon, with the base stretching across nearly half a mile of land — and set to be used for “a larger scale of a massacre than Oct. 7.”
Inside, the IDF soldiers found helicopter missiles, mortar shells, files, ammunition, motorcycles and enough food and supplies to last for days for Hezbollah’s elite Radwan troops as they allegedly prepared for operation “Conquer the Galilee.”
“They were planning, with these motorcycles here, to enter Kiryat Shmona, to Yiftah, to villages and positions inside Israel and conduct a massacre,” Hagari said, claiming it would have been larger than the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.
The IDF captured the underground complex late last week after a Hezbollah fighter was located hiding inside the bunker.
The terrorist was killed by the Israeli Air Force, with ground troops from the Reserve Brigade then infiltrating the base and finding the supplies being readied for Hezbollah’s top fighters.
“This bunker was ready for the battalion of [the terror group’s elite] Radwan forces to … do a raid into Israel and do a larger scale of massacre than Oct. 7,” Hagari said.
This is the second time Israel has accused Hezbollah of plotting an Oct. 7-style invasion into northern Israel, with Israeli President Isaac Herzog claiming that Radwan commanders were planning such an attack last month.
Herzog said an invasion in the north has long been a goal of “the Empire of Evil of Iran,” as he justified an airstrike in Beirut that killed 16 Hezbollah commanders and operatives.
Hagari said Monday that the fact that the bunker was located so close to the border was a clear violation of the UN Security Council’s Resolution 1701, which ended the Israeli-Lebanon war in 2006.
The resolution called for a ceasefire and demilitarized buffer zone between Israel and Lebanon, where the IDF and Hezbollah are currently fighting.
The IDF vowed to continue its operations in southern Lebanon until it fully dismantles Hezbollah’s terror infrastructure in the area, ensuring the terror group no longer poses a threat to northern Israel.
