Israeli ground troops raided several sites inside Lebanon in recent days, destroying Hezbollah weapon depots and other infrastructure, the Israel Defense Forces said Wednesday.

The announcement of the rare special operations in the Lebanon’s south, where Israel has kept troops deployed at five points just north of the border since a November 2024 ceasefire with Hezbollah, came days after a US envoy expressed optimism about pushing ahead with a plan to disarm the Iran-backed terror group.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, soldiers of the 300th “Baram” Regional Brigade who raided a site in the Jabal Blat area — around a kilometer from the Israeli border — located a Hezbollah compound that included a weapons depot and firing positions. The military said the troops demolished the site.

In another raid, the IDF said reservists of the Oded Brigade located weapons hidden in a forested area near Labbouneh — just across from the western portion of the border — including a multiple rocket launcher, a machine gun, and dozens of explosive devices. The weapons were also destroyed.

In the same area, the soldiers also located an underground site used by Hezbollah to store weapons, and it was demolished by combat engineers, the IDF said.

Under the ceasefire agreement, Hezbollah was required to withdraw its fighters north of the Litani River and dismantle all military infrastructure in southern Lebanon. Israel was to withdraw from Lebanon, while maintaining the right to strike threats to its security.

Israeli airstrikes against Hezbollah violations of the ceasefire have been frequent in the months since, but IDF ground operations by troops beyond the areas of the five posts have been much rarer.

The “special, targeted” raids were launched “following intelligence information and the identification of Hezbollah weapons and terrorist infrastructure in several areas of southern Lebanon,” and were intended to “prevent Hezbollah from reestablishing itself in the area,” the military said in a statement.

The IDF also announced that a Hezbollah commander had been killed in an Israeli drone strike in southern Lebanon a night earlier.

The strike in the town of Babliyeh, south of Sidon, killed Hussein Ali Muzhir, who the IDF said was the commander of Hezbollah’s firepower in the Zahrani River area, under the terror group’s Badr regional division.

“As part of his role, Hussein advanced numerous [rocket] fire attacks toward the State of Israel and IDF troops. Additionally, recently he was involved in attempts to restore the artillery capabilities of the Hezbollah terror group in southern Lebanon,” the military said in a statement.

The IDF said his actions “constitute a blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”

Israel says it has killed over 180 Hezbollah operatives in strikes against the terror group since the late November ceasefire, alleging violations of the truce agreement.

The ceasefire agreement brought to an end more than a year of fighting with the Iran-backed Hezbollah, including two months of open war in southern Lebanon late last year.

Hezbollah began attacking military outposts and communities in northern Israel unprovoked on October 8, 2023, in a show of support for fellow Iranian terror proxy Hamas in Gaza after it led an invasion and onslaught in southern Israel a day earlier.

On Monday, US envoy Thomas Barrack said he was “unbelievably satisfied” satisfied by the response of Lebanon’s authorities to a request to disarm Hezbollah, part of a process meant to bring a remove the need for Israel to take military action in Lebanon.

“It’s thoughtful, it’s considered. We’re creating a go-forward plan,” he said.

Hezbollah’s leader Naim Qassem said Sunday that the group would not give up its weapons.

Since the ceasefire, the Lebanese state has been working methodically to dismantle Hezbollah’s infrastructure in the south of the country, and is estimated to have seized the majority of the terror group’s weapons stockpile in the same area.

The IDF says its presence at the five points near the border are necessary to ensure the safety of Israeli communities.

AFP contributed to this report.