Al Jazeera is reporting from outside Israel because it has been banned by the Israeli government
We are slowly getting a clearer picture. At the moment there are around 20 ambulances waiting in the north of Israel to receive soldiers that are being evacuated from the Lebanese border area by helicopter. Other than that, it isn’t clear.
We know that in the morning there were various rocket barrages on that area from Lebanon. This is the border area where you have that build-up of Israeli troops.
We also have two confirmed statements. One by the Israeli military saying there were intense clashes at the border between Israel soldiers and Hezbollah forces. That has also been confirmed by Hezbollah. So this seems like the first face-to-face incident since the launch of the ground operation.
As we’ve been reporting, Israel really has the upper hand when it comes to firepower from the sky. But it was always going to be Hezbollah that had the strength, the upper hand, when it came to any potential ground invasion.
This is their territory and certainly it seems – in what is potentially the first face-to-face confrontation – that Israel has sustained heavy casualties.
