Israeli fighter jets demolished Hezbollah’s largest and most strategic precision missile production site just hours before the truce with the terror group came into effect on early Wednesday, the Israel Defence Forces said in a statement.
The site, very close to the Syrian border, was hidden 70 metres underground in a subterranean complex that stretched for 1.4 kilometres near the town of Janta in the east of Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley.
Military footage from the night before the truce shows airstrikes pounding the strategic site. Fighter jets pummelled the location for over four hours, dealing “a blow to the Hezbollah terror organization’s ability to produce weapons,” said the IDF.
Prior to the destruction of the missile site, the IDF planes targeted the surrounding area, including a central Hezbollah Radwan Force base where hundreds of operatives were killed.
The missile manufacturing plant was constructed many years ago with the help of Iran, and Iranians worked at the facility alongside Hezbollah agents.
““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.
It was used to manufacture precision surface-to-surface missiles and other weapons, and to store the guided missiles.
Israel had been monitoring the plant “for a long time,” said IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari in a press conference Wednesday evening, who detailed how the complex was divided into different spaces, each of which was dedicated to manufacturing a separate part of the missile.
Disabling Hezbollah’s capacity to obtain precision-guided missiles has been a central tenet of Israel’s effort to disrupt Iran’s weapons supply to the terror group.
The Israeli Security Cabinet voted 10-1 on Tuesday evening to approve a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The truce, brokered by the United States and France, aims to put to an end almost 14 months of fighting at the northern border.
Hezbollah has attacked the Jewish state nearly daily for more than a year, firing thousands of rockets, missiles and drones across the border.
Jerusalem escalated the attacks in late September, when it added the return of displaced citizens to northern Israel to its official war goals. On March 1, Israel launched a limited ground incursion into southern Lebanon to tackle the terror group’s network of underground tunnels and other infrastructure.