Ten weeks into the invasion of Lebanon and about three weeks into the ceasefire, the IDF said on Sunday that it has confiscated over 10,000 Hezbollah weapons in a large number of different districts of southern Lebanon.
More specifically, IDF Division 91 has operated in more than 10 different districts, while Division 98 has operated in at least six – though there probably was also some overlap between the two divisions.
Division 91 reached all the way to the Litani River and the Saluki parts of southern Lebanon which are deeper into the country.
Some of the areas Division 98 operated in were Khiam, Al-Adaysseh, Rab Al-Tlatin, Marjayoun, Al-Taybeh, and Al-Khiam.
In addition, Division 91 said it had destroyed 1,000 Hezbollah sites, while Division 98 said it had destroyed more than 300.
While Division 98 was the first IDF division to enter Lebanon and handled some of the toughest initial fighting in light of its status as a de facto special forces division, it eventually handed off much of the rest of the operation to Divisions 91, 36, and 146.
On October 8, the Jerusalem Post embedded with Division 91 Commander Brig.-Gen. Shai Kleper along with a small number of other Israeli media outlets and he said, “We are standing in one of the battle areas on the Lebanese front. We are acting to harm, neutralize, and destroy Radwan operatives and their attack plan in terms of their capabilities and infrastructure.”
Radwan forces store military equipment in civilian homes
“We are in a weapons storage area for Radwan [inside a village civilian house]. You can see hundreds of vests, mortars, mines… all the weapons they need. An operative could show up here in jeans and sandals, receive all of his war supplies, a map, and a plan of attack for which he was pre-trained,” he continued.
Other key commanders have been Brig.-Gen. Guy Levi of Division 98, Brig.-Gen. Moran Omer’s of Division 36, and Brig.-Gen. Yiftach Norkin of Division 146.
In recent weeks, Division 98 zoned in on Al-Khiam, which had become a central Hezbollah stronghold for firing thousands of rockets at Israel prior to the November 26 ceasefire.
At the end of last week, the IDF started to withdraw from portions of southern Lebanon as part of its commitment for a full withdrawal by around January 26.
IDF sources have said that the Lebanese army is starting to take control of the areas where the IDF withdraws from, though it remains unclear whether that military will be able to hold on to those areas versus Hezbollah once the full IDF withdrawal has occurred and Jerusalem's attention is elsewhere.
To date, though the IDF has killed as many as 40 Hezbollah fighters who it said were trying to sneak into southern Lebanon or prepare to carry out other ceasefire violations, mostly Hezbollah has respected the ceasefire.
Prior to November 26, Hezbollah was firing around 100-250 rockets a day on around one third of the country, including the very populous Haifa region.In northern Gaza, IDF soldiers from the Givati Brigade under the 162nd Division, in coordination with the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), carried out a series of targeted operations to eliminate Hamas terror cells, the military announced on Sunday.
Acting on prior intelligence, troops also raided a known terrorist meeting point in the Beit Hanoun area. The operations, which involved cooperation with the IAF, resulted in the elimination of dozens of Hamas terrorists and the arrest of additional terror suspects - a larger quantity of Hamas fighters in a short time than the IDF is generally getting in this time period when large scale fighting is less frequent.
In the neighboring Beit Lahiya area, IDF soldiers located and dismantled large quantities of weapons, including explosives and dozens of grenades. These efforts are aimed to curtail the operational capabilities of terrorist groups in the region.
In a separate operation earlier Sunday, the IAF, guided by IDF and Shin Bet intelligence, struck a Hamas command and control center situated in a compound that previously housed the Abu Shabak clinic in northern Gaza. The IDF said that the facility was being used to store weapons and coordinate attacks against IDF soldiers and Israeli civilians.
According to foreign media, some of these raids may also have killed Palestinian civilians, potentially in the double digits, though it was unclear from the reports what the claims were in terms of the quantity of fighters killed versus civilians.
The IDF did not issue a specific response to the claims of civilian harm, but said that it had taken measures to reduce the potential harm to civilians and that some of the terrorists were involved in imminent efforts to attack IDF forces.
Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.