IDF says it hit Hezbollah’s largest precision missile production site hours before truce
Military says underground complex that stretched for 1.4 kilometers was terror group’s most strategically significant weapons-making site
In the hours before a ceasefire with Hezbollah came into effect early Wednesday, Israeli fighter jets destroyed the terror group’s largest underground precision-guided missile manufacturing site in Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces said.
The military released footage of the airstrikes from the night before on the site, which was hidden in a subterranean complex that stretched for 1.4 kilometers (less than a mile) near the town of Janta in eastern Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley, very close to the Syrian border.
Fighter jets pounded the location for over four hours, according to the military, dealing “a blow to the Hezbollah terror organization’s ability to produce weapons.”
Before the massive bombardment of the missile site, planes struck the surrounding area, including a central Hezbollah Radwan Force base, the IDF said in its statement. The military estimated that dozens of operatives were killed in the strike on the Radwan base.
The missile manufacturing plant was built several years ago with Iranian support, the IDF said.
It was used by Hezbollah to build precision surface-to-surface missiles and other weapons, as well as to store the guided missiles. The IDF said that Iranian operatives also worked at the facility alongside Hezbollah.
Its proximity to Syria allowed Hezbollah to smuggle into Lebanon thousands of components to build the precision missiles, as well as for operatives to travel between Syria and Lebanon, according to the statement.
“This was Hezbollah’s most strategically significant production facility in Lebanon targeted during the war. The strike was made possible by a precise intelligence file that was collected and built over the years,” the IDF said.
IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, in a live press conference Wednesday evening, also remarked on the attack, saying Israel had been monitoring the site “for a long time.”
He said the complex was divided into different spaces, each of which produced a different part for the precision surface-to-surface missiles.
Preventing Hezbollah from obtaining precision-guided missiles has been a central plank of Israel’s to disrupt Iran’s weapons supply to the terror group.
The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah came into effect under an agreement brokered by the United States and France that aims to end almost 14 months of Hezbollah-initiated fighting across the northern border.
Hezbollah began firing into Israel the day after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 onslaught in southern Israel, in support of its fellow Iran-backed terror group, drawing Israeli reprisals and leading to the displacement of some 60,000 residents of northern Israel.
Fighting intensified in late September, with Israel killing much of Hezbollah’s leadership and launching a limited ground incursion on October 1 that has seen soldiers search villages for rockets and other arms held by the terror group, and tackle its terror tunnels and other infrastructure.
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