Israel’s military says eight of its soldiers have been killed in combat in southern Lebanon, its first losses since the start of the ground invasion against the armed group Hezbollah.
Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, said it had destroyed Israeli tanks during the fighting and insisted it had enough men and ammunition to push back the forces.
Earlier, the Israeli military announced that more infantry and armoured troops had joined the operation seeking to dismantle what it called “terrorist infrastructure” in Lebanese border villages.
Meanwhile, there have been more Israeli air strikes in Beirut’s densely populated southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has its most important base.
Hezbollah has been weakened after two weeks of Israeli strikes and other attacks that have killed more than 1,200 people across Lebanon and displaced around 1.2 million, according to Lebanese authorities.
In a full-scale war I get you, but in Israel’s case the casualties are usually not enough for that kind of foul play. The number can also be confirmed via publicly available routes, which is why people could tell that October 7th killed 1000 and change instead of the initial 1200 estimate, and that 66% of those were military or security targets. Israel didn’t release that information themselves.
I took like two or three months until they revised down the numbers. So it is possible to have uncertain numbers floating around for a while, either over- or under-reporting depending on the current tactical goal.
I mean fair enough but the reported number is 8. If they underreport what will they say? 10? 11? It’s very rare for Arab militias to score casualties in the double digits against the Israeli military (October 7th was a massive outlier), so I’d be inclined to take the number at face value or expect it to go up by one or two due to fatal injuries.