Israelidiggers
© AP/Mohammed ZaatariIsraeli equipment work on a section of the Lebanese-Israeli wall near Kafr Kila, Lebanon.
Israel has identified one more Hezbollah tunnel in the region close to the border with Lebanon, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) press service reported on Tuesday.

According to the IDF, this is the third tunnel exposed by the Israeli forces that was made by militants from the Hezbollah group.

The discovery of the third tunnel dug from Lebanon into Israel comes amid Operation Northern Shield, an Israeli campaign to find and destroy tunnels allegedly dug by Hezbollah militants to enable them to illegally transfer fighters and arms into Israel.


Israel began Operation Northern Shield last Tuesday. The UN force confirmed the existence of one tunnel running from Lebanese territory into Israel. Beirut has called on Tel Aviv to provide detailed, hard proof about the alleged tunnel network, with a source telling Lebanese media that the tunnel which was found was "old and deserted."

Israel and Lebanon last clashed in 2006, with Israeli forces invading the country after Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. The conflict, which lasted 34 days and claimed the lives of over 1,300 people, was halted by a UN-brokered ceasefire. Lebanese-Israeli relations have been poor for decades, but tensions have been exacerbated recently amid Israeli suspicions that Hezbollah was being used by Iran as a proxy to wage war on Israel.