IDF says Yahalom engineers blew up 35-metre Hezbollah tunnel at Majdal Zoun

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says its troops have destroyed a Hezbollah tunnel roughly 35 metres long in the area of Majdal Zoun, a town in southern Lebanon. According to the IDF spokesperson, soldiers of the 300th Brigade, which operates under the 91st Division, carried out the work together with the Yahalom Unit, the army's specialist combat engineering force. The military described the site as another underground terror tunnel dismantled in that area, suggesting earlier finds nearby, though it did not say how many.

Emanuel Fabian, military correspondent for The Times of Israel, reported that the IDF said the tunnel contained two rooms in which Hezbollah operatives would stay. In the army's account as he relayed it, the passage was first scanned and then blown up by Yahalom engineers, and the military released video of the demolition. The IDF's own post on X described the two spaces as Hezbollah living quarters. The Israeli news site Ynet carried the army's announcement in Hebrew, and The Times of Israel ran it on its live blog.

The units involved

The 300th Brigade, which Fabian identified by its name, Baram, is a regional brigade. In the IDF structure, a regional or territorial brigade is responsible for a defined stretch of a border and the ground around it, rather than being a manoeuvre formation that moves between fronts. It sits under the 91st Division, the formation the army assigns to the Lebanese frontier.

Yahalom, Hebrew for "diamond", is the elite engineering unit the IDF calls on for tunnels, explosives and other underground or demolition work. Its involvement is standard when the army finds a tunnel: the passage is mapped and searched before it is destroyed, which matches the sequence the military described here.

Where Majdal Zoun is and what the "Security Zone" means

Majdal Zoun is a town in southern Lebanon, the region where Hezbollah has long kept fighters, weapons and infrastructure close to the Israeli border. The IDF says its troops are working there inside what it calls the Security Zone, its term for the area of southern Lebanon where Israeli forces are operating. The military says the purpose of that presence is to remove threats to Israeli civilians.

Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shiite armed movement and political party backed by Iran. Israel regards it as a terrorist organisation. Tunnels have been a recurring feature of the conflict: Israel says the group uses underground routes and shelters to hide fighters and equipment, and the IDF has repeatedly announced the discovery and destruction of such sites in southern Lebanon.

The ceasefire framing

In its post on X, the IDF said it would not let Hezbollah harm Israeli civilians or soldiers, that it would keep acting to remove threats, and that it remains "committed to the ceasefire agreement between Israel & Lebanon." The army presents operations of this kind as consistent with that agreement, as enforcement against Hezbollah positions rather than renewed hostilities. The reports do not include any Lebanese or Hezbollah reaction to that position.

How the accounts differ

The reports agree on the essentials: the location, the length of roughly 35 metres, the two rooms, and the role of the 300th Brigade and Yahalom. There are small differences in wording. The IDF spokesperson's statement uses "dismantled", while Fabian's account says the tunnel was blown up after being scanned. Fabian also says the demolition happened recently, without giving a date, whereas the IDF statements describe the troops as still operating in the area. All the details come from the military itself; none of the reports describes an independent visit to the site.

What the reports do not say

The reports do not say when the tunnel was found or demolished, whether anyone was in it, or what, if anything, was recovered inside it. They do not say how many tunnels have previously been destroyed in the Majdal Zoun area, despite the IDF calling this one another. No response from Hezbollah, the Lebanese government or any ceasefire monitoring body has been reported.