Israel uses 1,100 tons of explosives on Hezbollah tunnels under Ali al-Taher

The Israeli military detonated more than 1,100 tons of explosives under the Ali al-Taher ridge in southern Lebanon on Thursday evening, collapsing a Hezbollah underground complex that the army said ran more than two kilometres and served as the command post of the Badr Unit.

Lebanon's National Centre for Geophysics recorded seismic waves comparable to a magnitude 4.2 event at 9:08 p.m. local time. The United States Geological Survey listed a magnitude 4.1 tremor. Lebanon's National News Agency said the shock and the sound reached Nabatieh and the towns around it. The ridge sits on the outskirts of Nabatieh al-Fawqa, about 10 kilometres from the Israeli border, with sightlines toward Metula and Kiryat Shmona.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz issued a joint statement. They said the tunnels were "strategic terrorist infrastructure that was built over two decades, with Iranian funding and planning." They said the site was designed as a staging base for an attack into the Galilee and that its destruction "completes the achievement of operational control over the Ali al-Taher ridge, above and below ground."

The army's account of what was inside is specific. Troops who had already taken the surface found two main tunnels holding dozens of Iranian-made rockets, missiles and drones, machine guns, anti-tank missiles, and hundreds of mines and other charges. The Badr complex, the army said, contained command rooms, weapons stores, generator rooms, living quarters, showers and a kitchen, built so fighters could stay underground for long periods. Badr is the Hezbollah formation assigned to the belt of southern Lebanon north of the Litani River.

With Thursday's demolition the army said it had finished a larger job in the Ali al-Taher and Beaufort Castle area: eight tunnels totalling 5.4 kilometres. Katz had claimed the ridge itself last weekend. Hezbollah at the time said Israel was inflating the ridge's value. Dozens of fighters were believed to have been inside the complex when a ceasefire took effect in June. Israel has kept striking in the south since then. Lebanese health authorities have recorded dead and wounded in Nabatieh, Arab Salim and Kfar Reman in the past week.

A June ceasefire remains on paper. Israel says it will hold the zone until Hezbollah is disarmed. Hezbollah has not accepted that condition. Talks on the next round of Israel-Lebanon contacts are listed for next week in Rome. Thursday's blast is a fact on that calendar. It is also a fact for anyone living under the ridge. A charge of 1,100 tons is a wartime demolition, not a police action. The seismic reading is the public measure of that scale.

Iran's role is asserted by Israel and denied as a current operational matter by Hezbollah's public line. The weapons list the army published is consistent with earlier recoveries of Iranian-made rockets and drones in the south. The command-and-living fit is consistent with the tunnel architecture documented in previous Israeli briefings on the Litani belt. Independent journalists have not walked the wreckage. The tremor, the NNA report and the army video of the ridge coming down are the parts that can be checked from outside.

What changes after Thursday is the subsurface of one highland. What does not change is the ceasefire that both sides already treat as optional, or the Rome date that now sits after a 4.1-magnitude demolition.