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Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi visited southern Lebanon to review Israel’s progress there, revealing that Israeli soldiers had killed an estimated 1,500 Hezbollah terrorists there, the IDF said Friday.

In a statement, the IDF said:

The Chief of the General Staff, LTG Herzi Halevi, conducted a field tour this week with soldiers of the Golani Brigade and the 188th Brigade operating in southern Lebanon, and held a situational assessment with the Commanding Officer of the Northern Command, the Commanding Officer of the Northern Corps, the Commanding Officer of the 36th Division, and other commanders.

…

Attached are the full remarks of the Chief of the General Staff: “We are very determined to strike Hezbollah as hard as possible, and look, we’ve taken out their entire senior command level. You are taking out their entire local command level here, the command is also working on what’s in between, and this whole thing is shrinking, shrinking. There are very significant damages here, a whole chain of command is being wiped out. Hezbollah is hiding casualties, they are hiding dead commanders. We estimate that there are around 1,500 eliminated Hezbollah operatives, and we are making reserved estimates, I assume there are more, and we don’t know, from many strikes. These are very important achievements. The fact that they are surrendering says something about the moral situation, it says something about the level of combat, about their self-confidence, it says something about the quality you brought with you. They understand that this is it, there’s nothing left to do – back to the wall, and that’s the next stage. And that’s why I think the combat is very, very correct, it also sends the right message. I’ll tell you something broader, I think even Iran doesn’t understand what’s happening to Hezbollah here. This is its main arm that it built up, and this is a very important thing now. And we are making sure that every day there is a very tough surprise for Hezbollah, and you will bring your surprises – surprises are both about bringing achievements and preventing the enemy’s achievements.”

Separately, the IDF announced Friday that it had killed Mahmoud Hamdan (Tom), commander of Hamas’ Tel al-Sultan Battalion who “was responsible for guarding Yahya Sinwar and overseeing the six hostages who were murdered in the area.” He was previously — and erroneously — thought dead, and was killed in Gaza “by the IDF during an encounter with IDF troops, approximately 200 meters from the spot where Sinwar was eliminated.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.