Israel’s military says it has destroyed a major underground Hezbollah complex beneath the Ali Taher / Ali al-Taher ridge in southern Lebanon, using more than 1,000 tonnes of explosives on tunnels spanning more than 2 kilometers (about 1.2 miles), BBC News reported, citing the Israel Defense Forces.

The blast triggered seismic activity equivalent to a magnitude 4.1 earthquake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey as reported by the BBC; Lebanese reports cited by Israel’s Army Radio likewise put the reading around 4.1, The Jerusalem Post said. A Nabatieh resident told the BBC the house shook “as if it was literally an earthquake,” with tremors felt as far as Saida about 40 km north.

In a joint statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said the underground network was strategic infrastructure built over two decades with Iranian funding and planning, and that destroying it completed Israel’s security zone and operational control of the ridge, above and below ground. The IDF said a central command complex belonging to Hezbollah’s Badr unit sat inside the system, with command centers, weapons stores, and living quarters.

According to the IDF, troops found dozens of rockets, missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicles, plus anti-tank weapons, mines, and explosives. “This was strategic infrastructure that was constructed over two decades, funded and planned by the Iranian terror regime,” the IDF said in a Telegram statement quoted by the BBC. “All of the terrorists who were inside the infrastructure were eliminated or fled.”

Later IDF briefings, reported Friday by the Jerusalem Post, put the explosives load at about 1,100 tons and described a broader Ali al-Taher network of roughly 5.4 kilometers of tunnel routes (about 3.4 miles) under the codename “Chisel of Flames,” with forces from the 36th Division, Commando Brigade, and Yahalom engineering unit involved. Those larger network figures are attributed to subsequent IDF disclosures; the initial public account emphasized more than 2 km of tunnels and more than 1,000 tonnes of explosives.

Netanyahu and Katz said the ridge infrastructure was intended as a base for an operation toward the Galilee and offered observation and fire control over Metulla and Kiryat Shmona; IDF troops, they said, are preparing to hold the area and prevent Hezbollah’s return. There was no immediate public response from Hezbollah or the Lebanese government, the BBC reported.

Context: Israeli forces took control of the ridge last week and occupy a swathe of southern Lebanon seized after fighting with Hezbollah resumed in March 2026, when Lebanon was drawn into the wider Israel–Iran war. A June U.S.-brokered Iran–U.S. ceasefire and a separate Lebanon–Israel framework envisioned Hezbollah disarmament and a gradual Israeli withdrawal — but Israeli strikes and demolitions in the south have continued, and Hezbollah has rejected direct negotiations under that framework, per BBC and Reuters.

Lebanon’s health ministry puts conflict deaths in the country at least at 4,362, including 395 women and 259 children, without separating combatants from civilians; Israeli authorities say 40 Israeli soldiers and four civilians have been killed, the BBC noted. Whoever holds the ridge holds the high ground over Nabatieh and the Litani approaches — and states keep proving how much tunnel concrete still answers to artillery and engineering units rather than ceasefire text.

Sources