Inside the hunt for Nasrallah: IDF officer reveals Hezbollah chief was rarely hidden in bunkers

The late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah cultivated an image as a “resistance” leader operating from underground bunkers to evade Israeli assassination attempts.

However, according to a senior Israeli military officer, Nasrallah spent much of his life living aboveground in residential buildings despite the constant threat of being targeted.

The claim was made by IDF Col. S., commander of “Nahalat Binyamin,” a covert Israeli Air Force unit responsible for planning strike operations and maintaining the Israeli Air Force’s extensive "target bank" of enemy sites and personnel across the Middle East and beyond.

The rare comments offer a glimpse into the intelligence and operational planning behind Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah’s leadership, including the September 2024 operation that killed Nasrallah and subsequent strikes targeting other senior commanders.

"We tracked Nasrallah for a very long time. We knew his apartments, his wife's home, his emergency locations, and the places where he hid. But the truth is that most of the time, he was not hiding in a bunker. There were periods when Nasrallah lived in a penthouse on the eighth floor of a residential building in Dahiyeh. When he needed to hide, he used a special elevator installed for him,” Col. S. told the news outlet Maariv.

In September 2024, the Israeli Air Force eliminated Nasrallah and multiple top Hezbollah commanders who had convened at Hezbollah’s subterranean headquarters in southern Beirut.

"In the Nasrallah operation, we dropped 83 bombs. By the way, we dropped the same number on his successor, Sayyed Hashem Safieddine, two weeks later," the senior IDF official revealed.

"He may have lived in a bunker ideologically, but in practice, he was not underground all the time. Operationally, it didn't really matter to us. Any bunker he entered, we could have killed him. We had relevant strike plans for every structure and every bunker," Col. S. explained without elaborating.

Addressing the operation in which Nasrallah was killed, the IDF officer revealed that "the Hezbollah leader had better protected locations he could have gone to that day, but he preferred to go to the specific bunker where we eliminated him."

The Hezbollah bunker was reportedly constructed deep underground beneath a multi-story residential building.

"The strike itself lasted a few seconds. The aircraft launched missiles intended to trap the occupants inside the bunker with no ability to escape," Col. S. said.

Prior to the operation, Israeli military planners anticipated that Hezbollah would attempt to rescue survivors from the site. Col. S. said he consulted with the head of the IDF Home Front Command’s rescue unit to estimate how quickly such an effort could be mounted.

"I asked how long it would take his people to reach a disaster site like Nasrallah's bunker. He told me they could rescue trapped people within six hours. I realized that in Lebanon, they were less organized, and that I needed to prevent anyone from approaching the site for 12 hours and attempting to rescue survivors. We wanted to make sure Nasrallah died, if not from the direct strike then from blood loss or suffocation due to lack of oxygen," he explained.

"After the strike, we saw a motorcycle arrive, and people tried to enter through a nearby shaft," Col. S. revealed. "Immediately afterward, they brought a bulldozer to rescue people from the rubble. We struck the bulldozer. Later, a second bulldozer arrived, and we struck and destroyed it as well. The third bulldozer never came."

Col. S. also discussed the Israeli operation against Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr, who was killed by the IDF in July 2024 while staying at his mistress’s apartment in Beirut.

"Based on the images we received, his mistress didn't look bad," Lt.-Col. S. said. "He had a long-term affair with her. We knew when he visited and how long he stayed. The affair lasted several years, and we always knew about it. He was a central figure in Hezbollah, and we knew his elimination would be a dramatic blow to the organization. We decided to strike the apartment when he arrived there. The attack was precise and powerful, and they were killed by the impact."