About a month after the Kfour attack the Islamic Resistance received indications that Israel was planning a similar attack around
Ansariya, a Lebanese coastal village located between
Tyre and
Sidon. It was therefore decided to attempt to ambush the Israeli force that was going to plant the explosive device. The operation was planned by Hezbollah commander
Mustafa Badreddine, who would later replace
Imad Mughniyah as top military commander of the Islamic Resistance. The precise target of the Israeli operation was never clarified.
Ronen Bergman claims that the target was Haldoun Haidar, a local Hezbollah commander, who was described by responsible officers at the IDF Northern Command as "minor and insignificant". The Hezbollah, however, understood both where the Israelis would land and the approximate route they would then take. The Israelis would arrive from the sea and walk a few kilometres through citrus plantations towards the target. The Hezbollah decided to plant explosives on the likely route, to hit the Israelis before they could reach their target. They had, however, no indication of when Israel would strike, which was a problem because during the daytime the citrus groves were tended to by the local farmers. This meant that the area could not be mined during hours of daylight for fear of harming the farmers. The explosives therefore had to be placed each evening after sunset and removed each morning before daybreak. Another problem was that the area around Ansariya was a weak spot for Hezbollah and dominated by
AMAL, a rival, but by then allied,
Shiite movement. It was therefore deemed necessary to contact the local AMAL leadership and warn them about the impending operation. AMAL accepted and even offered to provide a back-up unit for the operation. The Hezbollah ambush unit consisted of 20 fighters from the local militia, led by the local commander
Abu Shamran. According to later Israeli sources, several similar ambushes were organized at different locations. In the evening of 4 September 1997, a force of 16 commandos from the Israeli Navy’s special operations unit
Shayetet 13 walked ashore on an uninhabited stretch of the south Lebanese coastline. It was commanded by Lt. Col. Yosef Korakin. The unit crossed the coastal road and walked through the plantations, shadowed by Israeli drones overhead, which were relaying the images to the IDF command. The unit reached an orchard, covered by a wall. The forward unit successfully managed to break through an iron gate. When the main force passed the gate, a remote-controlled mine exploded. Fourteen seconds later, when the forward unit returned to the site of the explosion, a second mine exploded, killing the Israeli commander. Israeli Cobra helicopters quickly opened fire with
TOW antitank missiles and 20 mm
Chain guns, creating a perimeter of fire for the rescue helicopters. Reinforcements in the form of
Sayeret Matkal commandos and the Israeli Air Force's
Unit 669 rescue unit were landed by two CH-53 helicopters. The Sayeret Matkal commandos formed a defensive perimeter while the Unit 669 team evacuated the dead and wounded IDF soldiers. After two Hezbollah fighters were lightly wounded, it was decided to pull back. The AMAL fighters continued to fire on the Israelis with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, before pulling back themselves. The Hezbollah fighters continued however to fire mortar shells on the Israelis. Captain Dagesh Maher, a
Druze military doctor from the rescue team was mortally wounded by shrapnel from a mortar shell. A civilian Lebanese couple, that happened to pass by in car, were sprayed with bullets by the Israeli soldiers. The woman died and the man was severely wounded. A young girl was also killed in the crossfire. Lebanese army antiaircraft guns fired into the sky, hoping to hit the helicopters and jets overhead, and fired illumination rounds to light up the battlefield. An Israeli fighter jet fired at a Lebanese antiaircraft position and Israeli missile boats offshore fired several rounds into the village to silence the mortar fire, damaging several houses. More than four hours after the fighting began, the last Israeli helicopter took off with its cargo of wounded and dead soldiers. Despite frantic searches, one of the soldiers remained missing. It was Itamar Ilya, who was blown literally to pieces when the explosives he was carrying were detonated. == Aftermath ==