welch club at play

Lebanese sappers defused 13 rockets pointing at N. Israeli cities. The rockets were disarmed shortly before their timing devices would have launched them against Nahariya and Maalot. DEBKAfile‘s military sources quote Israeli northern command officers as reporting that on the night of Dec 25, eight rocket launchers were found ready to fire that night in Wadi Hamoul, 5 km from the Israeli border. This dry river bed was used by Hizballah to bombard Nahariya and Maalot in the 2006 Lebanon War. The cluster was made up completely of the latest Iranian launchers capable of double-loading, so that eight launchers could fire 16 rockets. Not all were fully loaded. The Lebanese sappers found 13 rockets with a range of 20-22 km. Three of the launchers were ready to fire 107-mm RAAD rockets and five were loaded with 122-mm Grad Katyushas. Israeli military sources are certain that Hizballah handed the rockets to Hamas terrorists at the Ain Hilwa camp in south Lebanon and guided them to the exact launching site for hitting the two Israeli towns. Their point was to demonstrate that Hamas could hit Israel with rockets not just from Gaza but also from a second front in Lebanon in the event of an Israeli military operation against Hamas. – DEBKAfile, Dec 26 2008