In first fatalities of Lebanon ground op, 8 IDF soldiers killed in battles with Hezbollah

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Posted on 10/03/2024 9:53:45 AM PDT by Red Badger

Over 100 rockets, drones fired at Israel after multiple strikes in terror group’s Beirut stronghold overnight; IDF sends 36th Division into Lebanon, joining 98th Division

Nazar Itkin, Cpt. Harel Etinger, Sgt. First Class Noam Barzilay, Cpt. Itai Ariel Giat. (Israel Defense Forces) The IDF announced the first fatalities of Israel’s ground operation in Lebanon on Wednesday after eight soldiers were killed during battles against Hezbollah operatives in the south of the country.

The slain troops were named as:

Cpt. Eitan Itzhak Oster, 22, a team commander in the Egoz Commando Unit, from Modi’in.

Cpt. Harel Etinger, 23, a team commander in the Egoz Commando Unit, from Eli.

Cpt. Itai Ariel Giat, 23, of the Yahalom Combat Engineering Unit, from Shoham.

Sgt. First Class Noam Barzilay, 22, of the Egoz Commando Unit, from Kohav Yair.

Sgt. First Class Or Mantzur, 21, of the Egoz Commando Unit, from Beit Aryeh.

Sgt. First Class Nazar Itkin, 21, of the Egoz Commando Unit, from Kiryat Ata.

Staff Sgt. Almken Terefe, 21, of the Golani Brigade’s reconnaissance unit, from Jerusalem.

Staff Sgt. Ido Broyer, 21, of the Golani Brigade’s reconnaissance unit, from Nes Tziona.

The six Egoz commandos were all killed during a gun battle with Hezbollah operatives in a southern Lebanon village. Another officer and four soldiers were seriously wounded in the same incident.

During the extraction of the casualties following the gun battle in a building, Hezbollah operatives fired mortars at the soldiers, wounding further troops.

The two soldiers of the Golani recon unit were killed in a separate incident, in which another soldier was seriously wounded.

In a third incident, a combat medic with the Golani Brigade’s 51st Battalion was seriously wounded.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent his condolences to the families of the fallen soldiers in a video statement shortly after the IDF announced their deaths.

“I would like to send my heartfelt condolences to the families of our heroes who fell today in Lebanon, may God avenge them, and may their memories be a blessing,” he began.

“We are in the middle of a tough war against Iran’s axis of evil, which seeks to destroy us. This will not happen,” Netanyahu continued, “because we will stand together, and with God’s help — we will win together.”

“We will rescue our hostages in the south, we will return our residents in the north, we will guarantee Israel’s eternity,” he added, referring to the official goals of the war.

An IDF probe into the deadly battle in which the six Egoz commandos were killed found that they began an offensive against a village near the border early this morning, where Hezbollah had infrastructure that the army was seeking to dismantle.

The troops had entered a building in the village, where they then encountered a group of Hezbollah operatives and exchanged fire with them.

Moments later, a series of other encounters began in the surrounding area, with dozens of Hezbollah operatives opening fire, firing anti-tank missiles, and launching mortars at the soldiers.

An Israeli Air Force drone carried out strikes and tanks shelled sites in the area amid the incident, and the wounded troops were all extracted and taken for medical treatment.

In all, six Egoz soldiers were killed and another five were seriously wounded. Several others were also taken to hospitals for more minor injuries.

The IDF assessed that the troops, airstrikes, and tank shelling, killed more than 20 Hezbollah operatives in the area.

Following the extraction of the wounded and at the end of the battle, the military said it gained control over the area where the fighting took place.

The IDF has been operating inside Lebanon since Monday night, when the 98th Division crossed over the border to demolish the terror group’s infrastructure with the aim of safely returning the tens of thousands of displaced Israelis to their homes in the north of the country.

It said on Wednesday that the 36th Division was also being deployed to Lebanon to assist the 98th with the “limited, localized and targeted raids” against Hezbollah targets and infrastructure, and shared footage of its entry into Lebanon overnight.

The IDF has said that it intends for the operations to end as quickly as possible and reiterated on Wednesday that any house used by the Lebanese terror group for military purposes would be a target.

To that end, the military called for Lebanese civilians in two dozen villages in the south of the country to evacuate immediately, warning that it was preparing to act against Hezbollah in those areas.

“For your safety, you must evacuate your homes immediately. Anyone who is near Hezbollah operatives, their facilities or their weapons, puts themselves at risk,” Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, said in a statement on X.

He warned civilians to head north and said that they would be updated when they can return.

The military issued similar orders the previous day to 28 other villages in southern Lebanon and has also warned against any movement of vehicles from the north of the Litani River to the south of it.

Sharing new footage of the 98th Division’s operations on Wednesday, the IDF said that the division had been engaged in close-quarters combat with Hezbollah operatives, and had been directing airstrikes on gunmen and the terror group’s positions.

In one recent operation, the military said, the division’s Egoz commando unity destroyed a Hezbollah position, including a rocket launcher and a cache of explosives.

More than 150 Hezbollah sites have been hit so far by the Israeli Air Force, the military added.

In a statement of its own, Hezbollah said its fighters had been clashing with Israeli forces entering the border town of Maroun Al-Ras, and later asserted that it had “destroyed three Merkava tanks with rockets as they advanced towards the village.”

It also claimed that it had confronted Israeli forces “infiltrating” the Lebanese town of Odaisseh in the early hours of Wednesday, and forced them to retreat.

Hezbollah operatives confronted “an Israeli enemy infantry force that tried to infiltrate into the village of Odaisseh… and clashed with them,” the statement claimed, adding separately that Hezbollah also targeted three different points across the border with rockets and artillery.

There was no immediate comment from the IDF on the claim.

The Iran-backed terror group said it had also targeted an Israeli unit with an explosive device near a southern border village, as it clashed with forces entering Lebanon.

“As the Israeli enemy army tried to sneak around the village of Yaroun… [Hezbollah] fighters surprised them by detonating an explosive device,” the terror group said, reporting Israeli casualties.

The IDF’s ground offensive began some two weeks into intensified fighting with Hezbollah, and after Operation Northern Arrows was launched earlier in September to meet the recently declared war goal of bringing residents of the north back to their homes following their evacuation last October under heavy rocket fire from the Lebanese terror group.

Alongside the ground operations, Hezbollah and Israel continued to exchange fire across the border on Wednesday, and sirens continued to blare periodically across northern Israel as the IDF said some 100 rockets were launched from Lebanon throughout Wednesday morning.

Some 40 rockets were launched from Lebanon at the Safed area, and 10 more were fired toward the Western Galilee and Haifa Bay area.

In addition, the military said several drones launched at the Western Galilee were shot down by air defenses, and another drone impacted in the Upper Galilee.

There were no reports of injuries in the attacks, although the municipality of Metula, which has been largely evacuated, said around 10 homes were damaged in one of the barrages.

Even as ground operations continued, the IDF’s Home Front Command announced that it was easing some restrictions in the north of the country.

Under the latest guidelines, residents in northern frontier towns, the Golan Heights, and Galilee, will be able to hold gatherings of up to 50 people outdoors, instead of 10, and 250 indoors, instead of 150.

In the Haifa Bay area, Jezreel Valley, Carmel, and Wadi Ara, gatherings of up to 60 people outdoors will be permitted, instead of 30.

Other restrictions, including in other areas of the country, remained unchanged.

Strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon have also continued, both in Beirut and in the south of the country.

The Lebanese army said on Wednesday that one of its soldiers had been injured in an Israeli drone strike as a unit worked to open a road at the entrance to the southern town of Kawkaba.

In the hours leading up to Israel’s ground incursion on Monday night, Lebanese troops had pulled back about five kilometers from their positions along the border, apparently opting to stay on the sidelines, as they have done historically in major conflicts with Israel.

Strikes were also carried out overnight in Beirut’s southern suburbs — a Hezbollah stronghold known as Dahiyeh — after the IDF called for civilians surrounding three buildings to clear the area ahead of imminent strikes.

An unnamed Lebanese security source told AFP early on Wednesday morning that “at least five Israeli strikes targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs.”

Correspondents told AFP that they had heard multiple explosions and saw smoke rising in one area while a fire appeared to burn.

The military said on Wednesday that it had carried out several strikes in recent days against Hezbollah infrastructure situated throughout Beirut, and released footage of one such strike.

It said that its fighter jets operated based on precise intelligence to strike “weapons production sites” and other terror infrastructure in and around Beirut.

It again stressed that it was taking steps to prevent harm to uninvolved civilians, including issuing advanced warnings to the population.

“The Hezbollah terror organization places its production sites and its weaponry under residential buildings in the heart of Beirut and endangers the population in the area,” the IDF said.

The strikes were separate from a number of targeted assassinations that Israel has carried out in the Dahiyeh suburb over the last two weeks against Hezbollah officials.

Evacuation of foreign nationals Amid the escalating cross-border violence and the developing ground incursion, several countries have said that they are working to evacuate their citizens from Lebanon.

Both Spain and South Korea announced plans on Wednesday to evacuate their citizens from Lebanon, while Seoul said it was also working to bring those in Israel home.

Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles said that Spain would be sending two military aircraft to evacuate as many as 350 citizens who wished to return to Spain as early as Thursday.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said that he had ordered military aircraft to be deployed immediately to evacuate its citizens from Israel and other parts of the Middle East, while the country’s foreign ministry urged citizens in both Israel and Lebanon to leave immediately by any means available.

Government data for 2023 showed there were 572 South Koreans in Israel including permanent residents and Israeli passport holders and 214 in Lebanon.

The UK said on Wednesday that a charter flight taking British citizens out of Lebanon had departed and that more flights were planned for the coming days.

Slovakia also announced that it was preparing to evacuate citizens and other EU nationals from Lebanon and said it had approved the use of a military plane to deliver humanitarian aid. Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Croatia and Poland asked for cooperation in the evacuation of their citizens within the plan, the Slovak foreign ministry said.

Since October 8, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.

So far, the skirmishes have resulted in 26 civilian deaths on the Israeli side, and — excluding the soldiers killed in the ground operation — the deaths of 22 IDF soldiers and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.

Hezbollah had named 516 members killed by Israel during the skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon but some also in Syria. Another 92 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and dozens of civilians have also been killed. These numbers have not been consistently updated since Israel began its new offensive against Hezbollah in September.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry says more than 1,000 Lebanese have been killed and 6,000 wounded in the past two weeks, without specifying how many were civilians. Israel has said that many Hezbollah operatives are among the dead. The government says that one million people — a fifth of the population — have fled their homes.

Times of Israel staff and Agencies contributed to this report.

1 posted on 10/03/2024 9:53:45 AM PDT by Red Badger

To: Red Badger

2 posted on 10/03/2024 9:55:42 AM PDT by Irenic

To: Red Badger

3 posted on 10/03/2024 9:58:45 AM PDT by CatOwner (Don't expect anyone, even conservatives, to have your back when the SHTF in 2021 and beyond.)

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