Raid in Baalbek

From JPost.com » Israel » Aug. 2, 2006 14:13 Updated Aug. 3, 2006 0:58, by ANSHEL PFEFFER AND YAAKOV KATZ ...

...[in] Tuesday night's operation in Baalbek....[Israeli commandos] slid down ropes from hovering helicopters and quickly took up positions as they began moving toward their target - a hospital in the Bekaa Valley deep inside Lebanon. As they drew closer to the hospital, believed to have been the place where kidnapped soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, were treated after they were abducted by Hizbullah last month, they encountered heavy gunfire from Hizbullah gunmen taking cover in surrounding buildings. The battle lasted for several hours, following which the elite force of close to 200 soldiers, returned to Israel carrying loads of intelligence information and without any casualties. At least 10 Hizbullah gunmen were killed.

The operation .... involved two elite units, one affiliated with the air force and the other with the General Staff. The units split up upon arrival in Baalbek, with one force assigned the Dar al-Hikma hospital - believed by Military Intelligence to be a base for Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The other unit, from the air force, swept through the Sheikh Havit neighborhood, some three kilometers from the hospital, where it found five apparent Hizbullah members, who were taken captive.

....The hospital in Baalbek is only one of a string of medical facilities set up by Hizbullah around Lebanon with Iranian funding, usually for the benefit of its Shi'ite constituency, as part of its policy of acting as an alternative to the Lebanese government. These hospitals have, in addition to regular hospital wings, underground bunkers used by the movement for its own purposes. Goldwasser and Regev were possibly treated in these bunkers before being moved elsewhere....

The hospital, the officer said, was not a medical facility in the classic sense but served more as a Hizbullah base of operations where guerrillas planned attacks together with Iranian instructors....

....Baalbek, which serves as Hizbullah's main command center where operatives train and test their UAVs and missiles, receives air protection from Syria, since it is near its border with Lebanon ..... the elite units discovered large weapons caches as well as much equipment, including computers that were brought back to Israel.