As all eyes were on the final stages of the coalition crisis Wednesday evening, the IDF lifted an embargo on information about a "behemoth" Hezbollah tunnel that had been dug beneath the Israel-Lebanon border.
The IDF reported that the latest tunnel constituted the largest construction of its kind, being dug at a depth of 80 meters (260 feet), the equivalent of a 22-story building, and 757 meters (2,500 feet) long. The tunnel was dug south of the Lebanese village of Ramiyah and by the time it was finished, extended 77 meters (250 feet) into Israeli territory.
The tunnel featured railway tracks, phone lines, a PA system, electrical cables, a water pipe and pumps, lighting, climbing ropes and air conditioning.
At a depth of 56 meters (184 feet), the IDF also discovered a large space that might have been plotted for use as a staging ground for cross-border invasions.
The tunnel, whose details the IDF exposed Wednesday, was one of the hardest for the army to locate during Operation Northern Shield at the beginning of the year, despite its massive size. To pinpoint its location, the army drilled dozens of exploratory holes in the surrounding area.
IDF engineers decided against blowing up the tunnel and plan to fill it in with concrete. A section of the tunnel will be left as-is, to help Israel explain the threats it faces from Hezbollah's violation of Resolution 1701.
"When we found the tunnel, we were all excited, even the former chief of staff," said Lt. Col. Avshalom Dadon, commander of combat engineering for the IDF's 91st Division.
"When we dropped a camera down [there] and saw the infrastructure, we realize that this ... tunnel] infrastructure we had never encountered before. It's one of the biggest 'flagship' tunnels I've seen," Dadon said.
As of Wednesday night, there were no reactions from Lebanon, Hezbollah or UNIFIL, the UN force in charge of monitoring the cease-fire in southern Lebanon.
Parts of this were originally published by i24NEWS. Read more at https://www.i24news.tv/en.
