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Hezbollah says it forced Israeli soldiers to retreat from Lebanese town
The Lebanese armed group said it confronted Israeli forces infiltrating the southern Lebanese town of Odaisseh early on Wednesday, before pushing them back.
Posting on Telegram, Hezbollah said its forces “clashed with [Israeli soldiers], inflicted losses on them, and forced them to retreat”.
First report of ‘face-to-face fighting’ in southern Lebanon
We have a statement from Hezbollah saying it confronted an Israeli infantry force that attempted to infiltrate the town of Odaisseh at dawn and “inflicted losses forcing it to retreat”.
There are unconfirmed reports of the injured being evacuated out by helicopter. Odaisseh is interesting. When this ground invasion was announced by Israel, there was a long and intense artillery shelling concentrated on three areas – Odaisseh was one of them. It is one of the chokepoints where Israeli soldiers are going to try to come into.
This is the first report of on-the-ground, face-to-face fighting.
We don’t know right now what the Israeli tactics are. What we do know is what we’ve seen in the past: special forces come into southern Lebanon, destroy Hezbollah infrastructure, and then retreat. Is this a blueprint for what we’re going to see?
Israeli forces appear to suffer casualties in first close combat with Hezbollah
We are slowly getting a clearer picture. At the moment there are around 20 ambulances waiting in the north of Israel to receive soldiers that are being evacuated from the Lebanese border area by helicopter. Other than that, it isn’t clear.
We know that in the morning there were various rocket barrages on that area from Lebanon. This is the border area where you have that build-up of Israeli troops.
We also have two confirmed statements. One by the Israeli military saying there were intense clashes at the border between Israel soldiers and Hezbollah forces. That has also been confirmed by Hezbollah. So this seems like the first face-to-face incident since the launch of the ground operation.
As we’ve been reporting, Israel really has the upper hand when it comes to firepower from the sky. But it was always going to be Hezbollah that had the strength, the upper hand, when it came to any potential ground invasion.
This is their territory and certainly it seems – in what is potentially the first face-to-face confrontation – that Israel has sustained heavy casualties.
Repeat of 2006? Why Israel’s ground offensive in Lebanon won’t be easy
The last time the Israeli military fought a ground war in Lebanon it was a debacle. That month long war, which began in July 2006, saw Israel’s soldiers bogged down in fierce fighting, as Hezbollah fighters led one Israeli tank column after another into carefully prepared ambushes.
Almost two decades later, the Israeli military said on Tuesday that it had launched a “limited, localised and targeted” ground operation in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah. Analysts say Israel could once again become bogged down in yet another protracted war in Lebanon.
Israeli army tanks manoeuvre in a staging area in northern Israel near the Lebanon border on Tuesday
