Hezbollah claims it “ambushed” the four soldiers who allegedly crossed the Lebanese border between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning and suffered light to moderate wounds from two explosions. An IDF spokesman told The Jewish Press on the report, “No comment.”
The Hezbollah-linked Lebanese Al Akhbar daily reported Thursday, “The enemy blundered when they violated the border with Lebanon, and fell into a trap that only the resistance could set. Only Hezbollah can make bombs that blow up Israelis.”
The claim can be discounted to a large extent because it was issued 24 hours after the incident, and Hezbollah probably took advantage of the information vacuum to score propaganda points.
On the other hand, the IDF’s silence leaves open the possibility for speculation. The most desirable scenario is that the elite combat soldiers were on a patrol beyond the border fence, which in some places is several hundred feet inside the border or at a disputed area. It is heavily mined, and the land mines that exploded may have been planted long ago instead of being part of an ambush.
The Lebanese army stated that the “Israel enemy had infiltrated approximately 1,300 feet beyond the fence, and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said there was blood at the scene.
The IDF unit, which UNIFIL said was comprised of 10 soldiers, retreated with the wounded soldiers and with the aid of light flares, and were rushed to a hospital in Nahariya, on the Mediterranean Coast.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu commented after the incident, “Our soldiers defend us and our borders, which is what they were doing last night. We will continue to react to defend Israel’s borders.”
Lebanon said it will file a complaint with the United Nations Security Council for a “blatant violation of Lebanese sovereignty and of UN resolution 1701”, which ended the second Lebanese war in 2006. Hezbollah was supposed to have been disarmed, according to the same agreement.