***update: Ed Morrissey reports Hezbollah operatives apparently captured at a hospital in Baalbek…Jpost has details…Baalbek roundup at RWV***

The Counterterrorism Blog examines the IDF’s expansion of the ground campaign in Lebanon.

Meantime, the IAF is increasing activity in the Bekaa Valley, where Hezbollah and their Syrian and Iranian backers have amassed power.

Rick Moran:

The Lebanese have accused the Syrians of never entirely leaving Lebanon, maintaining an outpost in the Bekaa Valley and being given cover by Hizbullah. It is also thought that the Iranians never left Lebanon either, handling logistical support for the terrorists also in Bekaa.

Could the Israelis be going after the Syrian and Iranian personnel stationed in the Bekaa?

The bulk of Hizbullah’s best fighters are stationed in the Bekaa Valley, being too valuable to risk in any stand-up fight with the IDF. The small sized operations carried out by the IDF prior to today netted only several hundred of the estimated 3,000 of these crack troops. Most analysts believed that in order for the IDF to really hurt Hizbullah, some kind of Bekaa operation was an absolute necessity.

Is this a raid? Or are these troops the vanguard of a major thrust aimed at the heart of Hizbullah? And what about any stray Syrians or Iranians? What would be the consequences of the IDF busting up any kind of logistical and/or intel operations being carried out by the terrorist’s patrons?

The next 48 hours will be the most crucial in this war. They will probably answer the questions above as well as decide the question of how serious the Israelis are about winning through to a decisive victory.

A Special Forces operation has targeted a hospital in Baalbek and “patients” have reportedly been spirited away.

Meanwhile, the Israel Air Force continues to investigate the air strike at Qana. Haaretz reports this:

It now appears that the military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time.

The Israel Defense Forces had said after the deadly air-strike that many rockets had been launched from Qana. However, it changed its version on Monday.

The site was included in an IAF plan to strike at several buildings in proximity to a previous launching site. Similar strikes were carried out in the past. However, there were no rocket launches from Qana on the day of the strike.

Via The Media Blog, it should be noted, MSNBC reporter Richard Engel reports there were Hezbollah in the area:

ENGEL: According to U.S. intelligence, Israel is getting more effective in confronting these Hezbollah rocket launchers, the batteries of rockets. But to answer your question, are they able to do that with the kind of precision and accuracy and not kill civilians, that is the whole issue at hand right now — this tremendous loss of civilian life yesterday.

We were trying to figure out today where all the men were in this village. If you noticed, all the people in the basement of this three-story building that was hit yesterday by two Israeli airstrikes were women and children, a lot of them young boys. So we went house to house in trying to figure out where all the young men were.

It seems that some of them were fighters, some of them were Hezbollah members that were out — this according to Hezbollah people who didn’t want to be interviewed but we convinced them to talk to us.

Hope they talk to the IAF investigators, too.

Bob Owens, Rick Moran, and Allah look at the latest developments. EU Referendum responds to the offended MSM elites here and here. And Dan Riehl’s chasing down suspicious ambulances stories from…Qana.

comments (0)   trackbacks (9)