IDF releases footage of tunnels dismantled under Lebanon's Ali al-Taher Ridge

The Israel Defense Forces published video on Tuesday showing what it described as underground tunnel routes dismantled beneath the Ali al-Taher Ridge in Lebanon. In a statement issued through its spokesperson, the military said the material included body-camera footage recorded by its Documentation Unit inside one of the routes, footage of troops from the Yahalom unit working to destroy the tunnels, and additional video of one of the underground routes.

The release also included a recorded announcement from the commander of the Commando Brigade, identified by the military only as Col. M. The IDF posted a shorter version of the material on X, describing it as footage of troops operating to dismantle the underground routes under the ridge. The military did not publish, in the material reviewed for this report, a count of the tunnels involved, a timeline for the operation, or an assessment of who built them.

What the IDF spokesperson's unit is

The IDF Spokesperson's Unit is the military's official communications arm. It issues statements, photographs and video through its own channels, including Telegram and X, in Hebrew, English, Arabic and other languages. Material distributed this way is the army's own account of its activity: it is filmed by military personnel, selected by the military, and released at a time of the military's choosing. It is not independently gathered footage, and international outlets that use it normally label it as supplied by the IDF.

The units named in the release

Two formations appear by name. Yahalom is the IDF's specialised combat engineering unit, whose tasks include locating, entering and destroying underground infrastructure and handling explosives. The Commando Brigade is an infantry formation made up of elite manoeuvre units used for raids and operations behind or beyond forward lines.

The identification of the brigade commander only as Col. M. follows standard Israeli military practice. Officers in special operations and intelligence roles are routinely named in public statements by a single initial, a restriction rooted in Israeli military censorship rules and security considerations. Readers outside Israel sometimes read the initial as an evasion; inside the system it is the norm, and the officer's full name is known to the chain of command.

Where the Ali al-Taher Ridge is

The Ali al-Taher Ridge is in southern Lebanon. The IDF statement places the tunnel routes it describes under that terrain feature. Southern Lebanon is the area where the Israeli military has operated against Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite armed and political movement, and where underground construction has been a recurring focus of Israeli operations and public statements.

Tunnel warfare has become a defining feature of Israel's military messaging on both its northern and southern fronts. Video of troops entering shafts, of engineering teams laying charges, and of controlled demolitions is released regularly, and it serves a dual purpose: documenting the destruction of infrastructure and signalling to domestic and foreign audiences that the capability has been removed. The material published here fits that established pattern.

What the reports do not say

Both items come from a single organisation, the IDF, and the claims in them rest entirely on the military's own account. There is no independent confirmation in the material of what the footage shows, where precisely it was filmed, or when.

The statements do not say how many tunnel routes were dismantled, how long or how deep they were, or what was found inside them. They do not date the operation, do not say whether it is complete or ongoing, and do not identify the organisation the military holds responsible for building the routes. No casualties, on either side, are mentioned. There is no reference in the material to a Lebanese government or Hezbollah response, and no comment from Lebanese authorities appears in the reports reviewed here.

The two IDF items do not contradict each other. The Telegram statement is the fuller of the two, listing several separate video files; the post on X presents a condensed version of the same material.