The Israeli military says it has captured a senior Hezbollah operative in an amphibious special forces raid in northern Lebanon.
The official added that the seized operative was now being investigated by Unit 504 – an intelligence unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported Saturday that eyewitnesses had seen “an unidentified military force carrying out a landing operation on the Batroun beach” at dawn the day before.
The troops “moved with all their weapons and equipment to a chalet near the beach, where they kidnapped the citizen Imad Amhaz and took him to the beach, (then) left by speedboats to the open sea,” NNA reported.
The Lebanese government said its security services were investigating “an incident that took place in the Batroun area,” at dawn Friday.
The raid comes a little more than a month after Hezbollah said it had targeted a naval base on Israel’s northern Mediterranean coast that houses an elite Israeli naval commando unit – thought to be a reference to Shayetet 13.
Hezbollah claims that attack took place on September 23. Asked at the time for comment, the IDF said “no injuries were reported” – but it did not confirm that the naval base had been targeted.