JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Israeli military announced that it has destroyed a fifth tunnel dug from Lebanon into Israel.
The tunnel was discovered several days ago, according to the Israel Defense Forces, and destroyed with explosives on Wednesday.
Earlier this month, the IDF launched an operation dubbed Northern Shield to neutralize the tunnels, which Jerusalem says are a violation of the agreement that ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
Israeli political and military leaders kept residents of Israel’s northern border in the dark about the presence of Hezbollah’s tunnels, telling them for years that the Lebanese terrorist organization was not digging under the border despite knowledge to the contrary. The Israeli army detected tunnels since the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and had been planning the current operation for a year.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of the Security Cabinet on Tuesday toured the area in the north of the country where the tunnels have been uncovered and destroyed. Netanyahu said in a statement there that the operation “is mostly behind us.”
“There has been exceptional work here to deny Hezbollah the tunnels weapon,” he said. “It has invested greatly in this and we have destroyed it.”
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