IDF says 55th Brigade finished Al-Mansouri mission, citing 600+ sites destroyed

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that troops from the 55th Brigade have completed an operation in the area of Al-Mansouri, a town in southern Lebanon that lies inside the zone the Israeli military controls north of the border. According to the IDF spokesperson, the brigade was working under the 91st Division and its purpose was to remove threats to Israel. The military said the troops dismantled more than 600 sites it described as terrorist infrastructure.

Emanuel Fabian, military correspondent for the Times of Israel, reported the army's announcement, describing it as a large-scale operation aimed at Hezbollah infrastructure. He wrote that the reserve paratroopers carried out the operation over recent weeks together with the Yahalom unit, and that residents of the town had been told to leave nearly two months earlier. In a separate post, the IDF said on X that troops had found a tunnel inside a civilian home in the town, and had also located dozens of missile launchers left in the area before a ceasefire agreement came into effect.

Who took part

The 55th Brigade is identified in Fabian's report as a reserve paratroopers brigade, meaning it is made up largely of reservists: Israelis who have completed their compulsory service and are called back for duty. The IDF statement places the brigade under the command of the 91st Division, the formation that oversaw the activity in this sector.

The brigade worked alongside Yahalom, which Fabian describes as the elite combat engineering unit of the Israeli army. Yahalom, a Hebrew word meaning diamond, is the unit the military turns to for underground work, including locating and destroying tunnels. The IDF statement credits the cooperation with Yahalom for the demolition of the underground routes found in the town.

The Security Zone and Al-Mansouri

The IDF refers to the area as the Security Zone, while Fabian calls it the military's southern Lebanon buffer zone. Both terms describe a strip of Lebanese territory where Israeli troops are operating, and Al-Mansouri sits within it. Fabian's report notes that the town's residents were instructed to evacuate nearly two months ago, which means the operation took place in an area the army had ordered civilians to leave.

Hezbollah is the Lebanese armed group the IDF has been fighting along the northern border, and the military describes the sites it destroys in southern Lebanon as belonging to it. The IDF post on X also refers to a ceasefire agreement, stating that the missile launchers troops located had been left in the zone before that agreement took effect. The reports do not describe the terms of the ceasefire or when it began.

What the military says it found

The figures in the reports come from the IDF, and Fabian's account attributes them to the army rather than confirming them independently. The main claims are:

• More than 600 infrastructure sites dismantled, a figure given in all four reports.
• Underground routes destroyed with Yahalom: the Telegram statement gives a total of eight, while the X post describes one tunnel found in a civilian home plus 7 other underground routes.
• Dozens of missile launchers located, which the IDF says had been left in the zone before the ceasefire.

The two IDF accounts of the tunnels are presented differently. The Telegram statement speaks of eight routes in total, and the X post singles out a tunnel in a house and then mentions other routes. The IDF did not explain in either message how the two descriptions relate to each other.

The IDF also released video with its X post, which it said showed the tunnel inside the home.

What the reports do not say

The material leaves several questions open. None of the reports gives a start date for the operation beyond Fabian's reference to recent weeks. The IDF statement published on Telegram breaks off mid-sentence, so any further details it contained are not available here.

The reports do not say what counts as an infrastructure site in the IDF's tally, whether that means buildings, weapons caches, positions or something else. They do not say whether any fighting took place in Al-Mansouri during the operation, whether there were casualties on either side, or whether any weapons were seized as opposed to destroyed.

There is no response from Hezbollah or from Lebanese authorities in the material, and no independent account of conditions in the town. The reports also do not say whether troops have left Al-Mansouri, whether residents will be permitted to return, or what the completion of this mission means for the wider deployment in the zone.