Israel military scours Kfar Ghajar border village for Hizballah spies on a school rooftop
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report January 29, 2015
The divided Alawite village of Kafr Ghajar, which stands athwart the Israeli-Syrian-Lebanese border triangle, was exhaustively searched by Israeli special forces Thursday, Jan 29, debkafile’s exclusive military sources report. The searchers were looking for evidence of spotters suspected of transmitting to Hizballah at its Mt. Dov (Shabaa Farms) outpost the day before, a description of the IDF command convoy vehicles to be targeted. Hizballah was therefore able to identity the convoy and attack it, killing two Israeli soldiers and injuring seven.
The IDF searchers by land and air focused on the roofs of village schools. From there, it is now believed, surveillance devices and spotters were perched and regularly passed information to the Hizballah position just four km to the northeast. That is how the Hizballah attackers are assumed to have singled out the IDF command convoy of civilian pickup trucks from the traffic that normally uses the road running below their Mt. Dov outpost.
The deviation from course of one of the six Kornet anti-tank rockets Hizballah launched against the convoy aroused suspicion. The deviant rocket struck a Kafr Ghajar school building which went up in flames. There is no chance that the rocket went astray because the Kornet system is laser-guided. IDF military analysts suggest that Hizballah bombed the school to divert attention from the presence of its collaborators in the village and the spies it had posted on the school roof.
The rubble of the burnt school is being carefully sifted through for the surveillance equipment which the rocket aimed to destroy. Investigators find Hizballah’s use of rooftop spies in Kfar Ghajar as the only explanation for its precision in targeting two ordinary white pickups on an Israeli road from a distance of 5 km, which is at the far end of the Kornet’s effective range. The IDF is also probing the use made by the servicemen in the convoy of civilian cell phone networks, which are known to be wide open to Iranian and Russian eavesdropping from across the border in Syria and Lebanon.
The servicemen are also being questioned about the use they made of the safe, ciphered military “Mountain Rose” communications network during their trip in the targeted convoy, and whether they used any of the popular mobile phones, on which Hizballah actively snoops.
