Continued Fighting in the Bint Jubayl - Maround al-Ras Region

Haaretz gives an after action report on the fighting in Bint Jubayl from dawn to dusk today.

Looking over my post last night I notice that I had implicitly assumed that the IDF had complete control of the town, excepting a group of 100 fighters that were supposedly surrounded in one part of the city. As Bill Roggio notes at the Counter Terrorism blog:

The Israelis have confirmed that Hezbollah is fighting like a professional military. Their units are fighting at the company level at the least (Unit size of approximately 100 men), and perhaps in larger formations. Intelligence also confirms there is specialization within the Hezbollah units, including trained infantry, mortar teams, missile squads, and logistical personal. Iran has trained and organized Hezbollah's army into something far more deadly than a militia force. Hezbollah's core 'active' army is estimated at 3,000 - 5,000, with as many as 50,000 part time militia and support personnel that can be called upon to fight (20,000 is the average estimate).

An IDF infantry platoon was sent in from the hill and ridge north east of Bint Jebayl, and ran into an organized ambush that had on call supporting elements. From the Haaretz article:

The initial battle raged for about an hour. During the next three hours, other platoons entered the area in an attempt to extricate the force that was pinned down. Hezbollah forces fired antitank missiles and threw grenades at the force it had caught in its ambush, and it also used mortars to attack the supporting IDF units.

What was once assessed as a surrounded, soon to be defeated enemy, turns around and shows that it has quite a bit of fight in it yet. From the Jerusalem Post:

Dozens of Hizbullah gunmen armed with antitank missiles and machine guns and geared up in night-vision goggles and bulletproof vests set a trap for a force of Golani infantrymen led by Lt.-Col. Yaniv Asor, commander of Battalion 51.

Eight Israelis were killed, while the IDF claimed that "at least 40" Hezbollah were killed as well.


Reading the accounts of the battle almost seem to be a mixture of "Blackhawk Down" and Stalingrad. A unit gets ambushed and draws in larger and larger forces in the attempts to rescue it. Meanwhile, Bint Jubayl is viewed by one side as a trophy to be captured, and by the other as terrain that must not be yielded. It will be interesting to see if Hezbollah tries to move in more troops and try to hold the Israeli's in position, or if they will instead attempt to fight a battle of posts up the roads leading north to the Litani river. I still think the latter strategy is more likely, but then again I wouldn't have guessed that nine casualties in a single day would take the luster off the IDF in the media.

Just some thoughts.