Over the past 30 years, the Hezbollah terror organization dug a tunnel network that is far more extensive and sophisticated than the Hamas tunnel network under the Gaza Strip, according to an investigative report by the Libération French newspaper published on Sunday.

Hezbollah constructed tunnels, cut into stone using North Korean technology, that extend for hundreds of kilometers and reach depths of 40 to 80 meters. One of the largest is 45 kilometers (28 miles) in length. Some tunnels are very narrow, designed to allow terrorists to infiltrate Israel, and others are wider to accommodate Iranian short-range ballistic missiles such as the Fateh-110. Other tunnels, situated under strategic areas, are filled with explosives.

The excavations for the tunnels began in the 1980s but were accelerated during the 1990s to house Hezbollah soldiers in the event of Israeli activities in the area.

According to the report, on October 8th, 2023, the day Hezbollah began attacking Israel, it published “a video depicting another Israeli nightmare, a fictitious attack in the Galil carried out by the elite Radwan unit via a tunnel from Lebanon.”

General Olivier Passot, who served as a liaison officer in southern Lebanon for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), told the French newspaper that “as early as the 1960s, perhaps even earlier, Palestinian groups who had taken refuge in Lebanon began digging the first tunnels and Hezbollah expanded the network in the 1980s and especially in the late 1990s.”

According to the report, the Hezbollah tunnels were not a matter of “digging in the sand and laying concrete as Hamas later did to create the Gaza network. In southern Lebanon, the rock has to be drilled by hand, either with jackhammers or with hydraulic machines, which are quieter. Every worker can dig an average of 15 meters per month.”

“They were still in the being constructed then,” Passot said. “We saw drilling machines, electrical cables, and ventilation systems, and it was possible to walk upright in them.”

According to a report by the Alma-Israel Research Center, after the 2006 Lebanon War, Hezbollah “created a defense plan in the event of an Israeli invasion, with dozens of operational centers equipped with local underground networks and inter-regional tunnels linking the nerve centers of Beirut, the Beqaa Valley and southern Lebanon.”

“The cumulative length of the tunnels would reach several hundred kilometers. Israeli researchers have identified proximity tunnels, simple corridors that would enable elite Shiite troops to carry out hit-and-run attacks on Israeli settlements, as in the video released by Hezbollah, and larger, tactical tunnels designed to enable Iranian-made Fateh-110 short-range ballistic missiles to be fired from underground.”

“In a report published in June 2023, Alma also mentions the existence of explosive tunnels, dug under strategic points, sealed and left without detectable activity for years, they are filled with explosives that can be detonated at a moment’s notice to create a devastating and terrifying earthquake, landslides and a deluge of earth and stones—a tactic used during the First World War.”

“In December 2018, Israel announced that it had discovered six attack tunnels dug about 40 meters deep beneath the Blue Line.”

The report also notes that Israel shelled southern Lebanon after October 7th with phosphorus bombs in order “to set fire to the pine groves to uncover underground tunnels. At least 12 entrances were found and bombed.”

According to Passot, who toured some tunnels, “it’s reasonable to assume that Israel located them using acoustic and seismic sensors. It would take weeks to dig through the rock to insert cameras inside.”

He added that Lebanese authorities deny the tunnels’ existence. However, the entrances to the largest tunnels are said to be hidden under private properties, such as large farms or factories, allowing them to bring in heavy machinery and evacuate earth without attracting attention. In addition, the Lebanese “environmental group” Green Without Borders, which is on the US sanctions list, is believed to have served as a cover for digging underground tunnels and warehouses.

“Hezbollah buys land and turns some of them into so-called nature reserves,” Passot added. “We believe they set up training camps or weapon caches in them and probably included shafts leading to these tunnels. Israel, which was present in the area, managed to limit this spread until 2000, but Hezbollah reorganized in 2006 and had another 18 years to arrange this territory.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)