Hezbollah has a large-scale inter-regional tunnel network stretching across Lebanon designed to move personnel and weapons, according to a new report released by the ALMA Center over the weekend.
According to the report, titled “Land of Tunnels” and authored by Maj. (res.) Tal Beeri, Hezbollah began its tunnel project after the Second Lebanon War in 2006 with the help of the North Koreans and Iranians and “is much larger than the Hamas ‘metro’ project in the Gaza Strip.”
The network supposedly connects the Beirut area, Hezbollah’s central headquarters, the Bekaa area used by the group as its logistical operational rear base, to southern Lebanon. According to the report by ALMA Center, which researches security challenges facing Israel on its northern front, the tunnels allow for “hundreds of fully equipped combatants to pass stealthily and rapidly underground.”
The tunnels are also large enough for motorcycles, ATVs (all-terrain vehicles), and other small vehicles to move through them to allow for troops to maneuver from place to place “for the purpose of reinforcing defense positions or for carrying out an attack in a safe, protected, and invisible manner.”
The cumulative length of the network may be hundreds of kilometers and in one area stretches some 45 kilometers, connecting the area of Sidon to the Bekaa.
“According to our findings, it seems that part of the project was conducted in the geographical area of the Jensnaya Wadi’s, the valley between al- Hasania and Wadi el Leymoun, Barti al-Sfenta (between Sniyeh and Bouslaiya), Mizra Kafra, south Zhalta. In addition, in the geographical area of al-Tswuan– al-Roummaneh, Jabal Toura (radar), Louaizeh , Sejoud , Mizra’a al-Zaghrine , al-Aishia, al-Qotrani, al-Sriri, Bracha Jabour, Meidoun and continuing to the western Bekaa,” the report read.
Like Hamas, the tunnels contain underground command and control rooms, weapons and supply depots, field clinics and specified designated shafts used to fire missiles of all types (rockets, surface-to-surface missiles, anti-tank missiles, and anti-aircraft missiles).
Beeri wrote that the tunnels are also used for artillery attacks, with the shafts opening for a short period before being shut. These shafts are hidden and camouflaged and cannot be detected above ground.
The tunnels in Lebanon, which do not cross the border with Israel, are the same as the tunnels in North Korea.
The report stated that Hezbollah’s tunnel network was built with the assistance of a North Korean company called the “Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation,” a company that specializes in the development of underground infrastructure. The actual construction of the tunnels was done by Hezbollah’s Jihad Construction Foundation.
In 2018, the IDF launched Operation Northern Shield to discover and destroy all cross-border tunnels dug by Hezbollah into northern Israel. The military said it found and destroyed six such tunnels.
The destruction of those cross-border tunnels was a significant hit to the group, and according to the IDF, they haven’t tried to rebuild them.