Nabih Bulos
Los Angeles Times, July 26, 2024
“Paramount among the questions facing Hezbollah is how Israel managed to identify, track and kill top officers of the group, which has a reputation for high levels of operational security and discipline.”
The first assassination took two tries. An Israeli drone fired a missile that hit a Renault van in southern Lebanon. When the target, a Hezbollah operative, climbed out and fled into a roadside thicket, a second missile finished the job. — That same morning, 60 miles to the northeast, another drone struck a Dodge pickup carrying a commander in Jamaah Al-Islamiyah, a Lebanese Sunni Islamist faction allied with Hamas and Hezbollah. The third assassination took place that night, when a missile slammed into a three-story building in the town of Jmaijmeh, killing Ali Maatouq, a senior commander with Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force.
The three hits last week were part of a particularly violent day across southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah, the Shiite paramilitary faction and political party, has tussled with Israel for more than nine months. But they were also another salvo in a longer-running intelligence war.
Since Oct. 7 — when Hamas made its brutal attack on southern Israel and Hezbollah launched what it calls a “solidarity campaign” — Israel has picked off some two dozen Hezbollah commanders.… [To read the full article, click here]