A soldier was killed and four others were lightly wounded in a Hezbollah explosive drone attack in southern Lebanon, the IDF announced on Sunday, while the military captured the historic Beaufort Castle and the surrounding strategic ridge as it pushed deeper into Lebanon.

The soldier, Staff Sgt. Michael Tyukin, 21, of the Givati Brigade’s Reconnaissance Unit, was an only child who moved to Israel from Ukraine with his mother in 2020.

Troops took over territory in the Beaufort Ridge and Wadi Saluki stream area and expanded strikes north of the Litani River after the Hezbollah terror group fired multiple rockets and drones at Israel on Saturday afternoon and evening, forcing schools near the border with Lebanon to close on Sunday.

Footage from Sunday morning showed Israeli and IDF flags flying over the citadel, a strategic medieval Crusader-built fortress with symbolic importance in the history of Israel’s military entanglements in Lebanon. Shelling was audible and smoke rose from the surrounding area.

The fortress, also known as Qalaat al-Shakif, commands sweeping views of the Galilee Panhandle in northern Israel, as well as the Nabatieh area in southern Lebanon, making it a position of considerable strategic value.

Israeli troops captured the castle in one of the first battles of the First Lebanon War in 1982.

Golani soldiers — the same brigade that carried out the latest raid — battled terrorists from the Palestinian Liberation Organization at the site, killing dozens. Six Israeli soldiers were killed in the 1982 battle.

The IDF then held the castle area during the 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon in 1982-2000, before troops were withdrawn.

“Forty-four years after the heroic Battle of the Beaufort, and on the memorial day for the Peace for the Galilee War, including the Golani soldiers who fell in the Battle of the Beaufort, IDF soldiers, led by the Golani Brigade, returned to the summit of Beaufort and once again raised the Israeli flag and the Golani flag there,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement.

Speaking later at a memorial ceremony for fallen soldiers of the 1982 First Lebanon War, Katz vowed troops would stay at the castle “as part of the security zone in Lebanon.”

Katz said that “the capture of the Beaufort and the expansion of the [ground] maneuver constitute a clear message to our enemies: Whoever threatens the citizens of Israel will lose their strategic assets one after another.”

The latest Israel-Hezbollah war began on March 2, when Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel two days after the US and Israel attacked its main backer, Iran.

The IDF said it launched a ground operation in the Beaufort Ridge and Wadi Saluki stream area in recent days in order to “destroy [Hezbollah] infrastructure and eliminate terrorists, as part of strengthening operational control in southern Lebanon and removing the direct threat to the Galilee Panhandle and Metula,” as well as to “expand the forward defense line.”

Soldiers crossed the........

© The Times of Israel