JERUSALEM: The Israeli military on Sunday said four soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon, bringing to 36 the total number of Israeli soldiers killed since the start of ground operations on September 30.
The soldiers “fell during combat in southern Lebanon,” the army said in a statement, adding that they were killed on Saturday.
Earlier, Lebanese state media said the Israeli army dynamited houses in Lebanese border villages, as Israel said it used 400 tonnes of explosives to destroy a Hezbollah tunnel, more than a month into an all-out war.
The official National News Agency said “the army of the Israeli enemy has since dawn blown up and destroyed houses” in the border village of Adaisseh.
The NNA also reported “large explosions” in the border village of Kfar Kila, saying the blasts were heard across the south as columns of smoke rose above the area.
Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee said 400 tonnes of explosives were used to blow up a “strategic underground facility” in southern Lebanon.
The “tunnel” was more than 1.5 kilometres (around a mile) long, Adraee said.
The Israeli military had earlier reported “the explosion of a large quantity of explosives in Lebanon” that was strong enough to trigger earthquake warnings in large parts of Israel.
The Israeli army published a video showing massive detonations at the border.
Lebanese state media has reported several incidents of Israeli blasts targeting houses in border villages in recent days.
Israel’s Channel 12 broadcast footage on Friday that appeared to show one of its presenters detonating a building while embedded with Israeli troops in the south Lebanon village of Aita al-Shaab.
Hezbollah says it is fighting Israeli troops at close quarters in Lebanese border villages.
The two sides began exchanging cross-border fire last year, but all-out war erupted on September 23, when Israel ramped up its air campaign against Hezbollah strongholds in south Lebanon, the capital Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley.
The war has left at least 1,615 people dead in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of health ministry figures though the real number is likely to be higher due to gaps in the data.
The war has displaced at least 1.3 million people, according to the International Organisation for Migration. More than 800,000 have sought refuge inside Lebanon while more than half a million have fled to Syria, most of them Syrians, according to Lebanese authorities.
