Hezbollah tunnels next to UN peacekeeping positions: Israel

On a forested mountainside near the border between Israel and Lebanon, two tunnel shafts descend dozens of metres into the rocky earth.

The entrance to a Hezbollah tunnel discovered close to a UN peacekeeping base in southern Lebanon. Picture: Getty Images

On a forested mountainside near the border between Israel and Lebanon, two tunnel shafts descend dozens of metres into the rocky earth.

About 100m away, the blue United Nations flag waved atop a peacekeeping observation post.

The Israeli military took a group of reporters into Lebanon on Sunday (Monday AEDT) to see the shafts, which it said were among hundreds of tunnels and bunkers used by Hezbollah militants to store weapons and hide fighters west of the Lebanese village of Labbouneh.

Israel has faced criticism from the UN and European capitals for injuries to peacekeepers as Israeli forces engage in a ground offensive against Hezbollah. UN personnel have been wounded and compounds have been damaged, according to the UN.

Israeli officers said the presence of the tunnels was evidence that Hezbollah had built military infrastructure around UN and civilian settlements, using them as cover. They also said that the peacekeepers, who are supposed to monitor and prevent militant activities along the border, weren’t doing their job.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday urged UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to remove peacekeepers of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon from the area, saying they risked being caught in crossfire.

Hezbollah didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the tunnel shafts and the allegations that it places itself near UN positions.

UNIFIL has said it doesn’t intend to leave its positions to fulfil its mandate from the Security Council.

Israeli officers said that international peacekeepers based at the UN site should have heard or seen Hezbollah drilling into the mountainside to dig the tunnels. The officers didn’t specify where the tunnels originated.

UNIFIL doesn’t have sophisticated detection equipment such as thermal imaging sensors or radars to detect underground activity, spokesman Andra Tenenti said. He said that peacekeepers report all tunnels and weapons they see and report all discoveries quarterly to the UN Security Council.

“We report all violations. If we had seen a tunnel, we would have reported it,” he said, adding that he couldn’t say whether the UN force was aware of the tunnels found by the Israeli military.

Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the UN’s head of peacekeeping, said last week that the UN force had highlighted concerns about Hezbollah stationing its forces near UN positions and potentially drawing fire from Israel. Now, he said, Israeli forces were doing the same.

Mr Lacroix said that UN forces remained in the area but that 300 staff had been moved to larger bases or taken other precautions.

Israeli forces fighting Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas have discovered numerous Hamas tunnels under and around UN installations in the Palestinian enclave as well as in and around hospitals and other civilian infrastructure.

The Israeli military’s revelations on the Hezbollah tunnel – near the border with Israel – comes amid worsening tension between Israel and the UN as Israel’s fight against militants on its borders has intensified in the months after a Hamas-led attack on October 7 last year killed 1200 people in Israel.

UNIFIL said on Sunday that at least 15 peacekeepers suffered minor injuries after Israeli tanks breached a UN position’s main gate.

The Israeli military said the tank had backed into the UNIFIL position while fleeing from a barrage of anti-tank missiles from Hezbollah that injured 25 soldiers. The tank was trying to help the evacuation of the soldiers and a smokescreen was used in those efforts, the military said.

In recent weeks, a military spokesman said, there were a few dozen incidents where missiles and rockets were launched at soldiers and Israeli communities from locations close to UNIFIL posts in southern Lebanon. One of these attacks killed two soldiers on Sunday, the military spokesman said.

UNIFIL was established in 1978 following a previous Israeli invasion of Lebanon. It has 10,000 peacekeepers from dozens of countries, including France, Germany and Italy.

Richard Gowan, an expert on the UN for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, said that UNIFIL doesn’t have the authority or capacity to take on Hezbollah but is authorised to assist the Lebanese army in securing the border area.

“The troop contributors would argue that the UN presence has at least created some day-to-day obstacles to Hezbollah’s operations, and 10 to 15 years ago I think the IDF would have grudgingly acknowledged that claim, but it no longer believes it,” Mr Gowan said.

In the area west of Labbouneh, many trees and bushes had been uprooted. Inside the tunnel shafts shown to journalists, which were too deep to see the bottom, Israeli soldiers said they found communications and surveillance equipment. The shafts were deep enough to protect Hezbollah’s fighters from Israel’s air force, they said.

The military said it discovered the extensive underground network along the western border in the past week. Some of the shafts were connected in clusters but it wasn’t clear yet whether the entire underground network was linked, Israeli officials said.

Israel’s military said it had found rifles and anti-tank missiles, uniforms and combat vests, medicine, blood, anaesthesia, water and internet cables in the tunnels. The military said it believed the underground fortifications were prepared to be used as a staging ground for an invasion on northern Israel.

Labbouneh sits near Israel’s border, and a Wall Street Journal reporter could see directly into the Israeli town of Rosh Hanikra, which abuts the Mediterranean Sea.

“We need to make sure that no terror group will encroach on our border. This shows we need a new solution because the current one isn’t working, ” said an Israeli officer accompanying the journalists, who said he lived in an Israeli town located just across the border. “Hezbollah could shoot an anti-tank missile through my window from here.”

The Wall Street Journal