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Israel Is Spying on Hizbullah Commanders - and Killing Them One by One
(Los Angeles Times) Nabih Bulos - One day last week, an Israeli drone fired a missile that hit a Renault van in southern Lebanon. When the target, a Hizbullah operative, climbed out and fled, a second missile finished the job. That same morning, 60 miles to the northeast, another drone struck a Dodge pickup carrying a commander in Jamaah Al-Islamiyah, a Lebanese Sunni Islamist faction allied with Hamas and Hizbullah. A third strike that night sent a missile into a three-story building in Jmaijmeh, killing Ali Maatouq, a senior commander with Hizbullah's Radwan force. Since Oct. 7, when Hizbullah launched its "solidarity campaign" after Hamas made its brutal attack on Israel, the IDF has picked off some two dozen Hizbullah commanders. In June, Israel killed Sami Taleb Abdullah, 55, head of Hizbullah's southeastern district, while he and three other operatives were holding a secret meeting. Three weeks later, it felled Mohammad Nimeh Nasser, who commanded the southwestern division, as he was driving in Tyre. Among the questions facing Hizbullah is how Israel managed to identify, track and kill top officers of the group, which has a reputation for high levels of operational security and discipline.