Ansariya ambush
1997 ambush in Lebanon
The Ansariya ambush took place during the conflict between the Israel Defense Forces occupying South Lebanon and the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, the armed wing of the Hezbollah movement. A 16-man force from the Israeli Navy’s special operation unit, Shayetet 13, on a mission in South Lebanon in 1997, stumbled into a deadly ambush by Hezbollah. Twelve Israeli soldiers were killed, which was the worst Israeli single-day casualty toll in Lebanon since 1985.
Background
On the night of August 3, 1997 an Israeli unit from the Golani Brigade's Reconnaissance Battalion was brought by helicopter to a valley a few kilometres northwest of Nabatiya, outside the Israeli Security Zone in South Lebanon. The force made it to the village of Kfour and planted explosives in a wall outside the home of Hussein Qassir, a local Islamic Resistance commander. The Israelis were detected during the retreat and a firefight broke out, but they were successfully evacuated by helicopter. In the morning Islamic Resistance patrols searched the village for road-side bombs left by the Israelis. When a group of Lebanese fighters passed by the wall, the explosives were detonated by a signal from an Israeli UAV drone. Hussein Qassir and Sheikh Taysir Badran, the Islamic Resistance commander in the nearby town of Nabatiya, and three other Hezbollah combatants were killed.
The ambush
About a month after the Kfour attack the Islamic Resistance received indications that Israel was planning a similar attack around Ansariya, a Lebanese coastal village located between Tyre and Sidon.
“Ansariya ambush” enters the record as 1997 ambush in Lebanon. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ansariya, ambush and Lebanon can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12236265. Authority coordinates are 33.413, 35.279. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997 and 1985.
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