DEBKAfile Exclusive reveals: Hizballah leader Hassan Nassrallah and top command are holed up in Hermel, the northern Lebanese panhandle bordering Syria. Among them, according to DEBKAfile’s military and Iranian sources, are Hizballah’s “chief of staff” Ibrahim Akil, its head of intelligence and terror Imad Mughniyeh and commander of special operations Halil Harab. The group fled their Beirut HQ Saturday night, July 15, and went to ground in the emergency staff bunkers prepared in advance of their July 12 attack on Israel. After failing to prevent the top Hizballah leaders’ escape from Beirut, the Israeli air force headed north Monday morning, July 17, and is clobbering the Hermel region. DEBKAfile adds: The Hermel drug-farming pocket bordered north and east by Syria is the haunt of smugglers who use the remote, strategically placed region to move fighters, weapons, cash and drugs across Syria into Iraq and as a staging post to other parts of the Middle East. The smuggling gangs’ overlord is Mughniyeh,
| you just KNEW he was involved somehow, didn't you? |
Syria's role in this smuggling operation is critical. DEBKAfileÂ’s Iranian sources add that the holds of all the Iranian passenger flights landing in Damascus from Thursday, July 13, have been crammed with weapons for Hizballah.
Friday and Saturday, 25 Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers, anti-tank and anti-air missile experts, arrived in mufti in the Syrian capital. They were led by the smugglers across mountain routes into Lebanon. Mughniye, a confidant of Iran's Ali Khamenei and Osama bin Laden, is constantly at NasrallahÂ’s side. He is believed by Israeli intelligence to have engineered the kidnap of the two Israeli soldiers on which sparked the hostilities July 12.