We had entered southern Lebanon early Sunday afternoon in a convoy of armored vehicles through a gap punched by Israeli forces in the snaking border wall.
A rustic nature trail in a forest of thorny trees and thickets led to a small clearing. Here, in the western sector of southern Lebanon, about 300 yards north of the border with Israel, Israeli forces showed us what they described as a secret military outpost of Hezbollah’s, equipped with large amounts of explosives and mines.
The outpost was the second of two sites that the Israeli military showed to international journalists during a supervised visit to the area on Sunday, two weeks after Israel invaded southern Lebanon in pursuit of Hezbollah. The sites were in a sparsely populated, leafy mountainous area near the Mediterranean coast that it now controls.
At the outpost, the Israelis had displayed the mines, as well as a metal chest marked “Explosive,” with English and Russian writing and numbers, containing ammunition, boots, helmets, a solar panel charger and other gear. According to the military officials at the scene, the small dugout had room for about 10 fighters — an explosives team, they said, whose mission was to blow a gap in the concrete border wall.
The stated aim of Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon was to degrade the military capabilities of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia, and to push its fighters further north. Israel has not said how far into Lebanon its forces will advance or how long they will stay.
Military officials on the ground said they were surprised at the extent of Hezbollah’s entrenchment in forward positions a short walk north of the border wall — evidence, they said, that Hezbollah had made meticulous preparations to carry out its long-threatened plan to invade northern Israel.
Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader who was assassinated by an Israeli strike on an underground bunker near Beirut late last month, “spoke openly about conquering the Galilee,” said Brig. Gen. Yiftach Norkin, the commanding officer of the 146th Division of reserve forces that was working to dismantle the underground infrastructure in the area. Mr. Nasrallah had made public statements vowing to take over parts of the Galilee, in northern Israel, for more than a decade.
There is no indication of whether, or when, Hezbollah intended to carry out such a plan. It last fought a war against Israel in 2006. But General Norkin asserted that the quantity and quality of weaponry that Hezbollah had brought to these forward positions, less than half a mile from the border, proved it “wasn’t just talk.”
The New York Times could not independently verify the details provided by Israeli officials on Sunday about the whereabouts and extent of the stores of weapons that were uncovered, or the level of Hezbollah’s preparations for an invasion of Israel.
Military officials said that, given Hezbollah’s strength, such an attack could have been much more devastating than the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7 last year.
That onslaught prompted Israel’s yearlong counteroffensive in Gaza. Hezbollah began firing on Israeli positions the next day in solidarity with Hamas, setting off an escalating exchange of fire that displaced tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of Israel’s border with Lebanon.
With Israel’s assassination of Mr. Nasrallah and other top Hezbollah commanders, and its subsequent invasion of southern Lebanon, the months of low-intensity cross- border conflict has since morphed into a broader war.
We drove to the first location along a rough dirt track that military bulldozers had cut through the bush, long known in Israel as Hezbollah’s nature reserves.
An Israeli flag flew from a small knoll, along with the emblems of some of the Israeli brigades on the ground.
The military supervised our visit and, under the restrictions imposed, we had to stick with the convoy, agree to not reveal exact locations and refrain from photographing soldiers’ faces. We were also instructed to identify the officers who briefed us only by their ranks and first names, in line with army rules, unless specified otherwise.
We stopped atop a ridge that had largely been cleared of trees and brush, with a commanding view over a swath of northern Israel, including the coastal city of Nahariya and the red-roofed homes of several border communities.
Military officers said that, contrary to their expectations, Israeli forces had so far encountered little resistance from Hezbollah fighters in the form of face-to-face combat. They said that the fighters fled northward with the Israelis’ advance, but that they left behind explosive devices and booby traps, and they continue to bombard Israeli forces and Israel itself with rockets and mortar fire from their new lines.
At the first stop, we saw two tunnel shafts leading to a network of hide-outs and weapons stores at least one story deep in the ground. A base used by United Nations peacekeepers was situated less than 200 yards away.
General Norkin said that an antitank missile launcher was found in this short section of the tunnel system, along with openings that allowed the fighters to fire into Israel from underground.
Major Ariel, a platoon commander of the reserve force in the area, and a resident of one of the Israeli communities in the valley below, said he had been watching this mountain for years. Even so, he said of Hezbollah, “the magnitude of how entrenched they are in this area was a surprise to me.”
Within one square kilometer, or less than half a square mile, he said, the forces had found about 100 sites used by Hezbollah for tunnel shafts, weapons caches, internet cables, water stores and supplies, including thermal scopes, blood bags for transfusions and medical kits marked “Made in Iran.”
At the second location, in the forest clearing, General Norkin said that at first, the troops could not find any traces of Hezbollah. But then they noticed signs marked on trees and followed the trail. A green symbol was visible on a nearby trunk. A small swastika had been drawn on a stump by an upturned wheelbarrow.
Lieutenant Colonel Tomer said that the forces had found hundreds of similar caches of weapons and gear. The munitions were new and well stored, he said, some with manufacturing dates from last year. Rocket-propelled grenades were oiled and wrapped in plastic against the elements, he said.
Hezbollah fighters would come here dressed in civilian clothes, like farmers, he said, adding, “Once you are inside the bush you are pretty much invisible.”
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