Abandoned weapons conclussively prove Hezbollah received arms from Syria, and strongly suggest Iranian weapon transfers too. The Daily Telegraph describes what the IDF found near the town of Ghandouriyeh:
Outside one of the town’s two mosques a van was found filled with green casings about 6ft long. The serial numbers identified them as AT-5 Spandrel anti-tank missiles. The wire-guided weapon was developed in Russia but Iran began making a copy in 2000.
Beyond no-man’s land, in the east of the village, was evidence of Syrian-supplied hardware. In a garden next to a junction used as an outpost by Hizbollah lay eight Kornet anti-tank rockets (pictured) described by Brig Mickey Edelstein, the commander of the Nahal troops who took Ghandouriyeh, as “some of the best in the world”.
Written underneath a contract number on each casing were the words: “Customer: Ministry of Defence of Syria. Supplier: KBP, Tula, Russia.”….
The discovery of the origin of the weapons proved to the Israelis that their enemy was not a ragged and lightly armed militia but a semi-professional army equipped by Syria and Iran to take on Israel. The weapons require serious training to operate and could be beyond the capabilities of some supposedly regular armies in the Middle East.
