Leaked Hezbollah footage from tunnels: teenagers as fuel for death
In the darkness of tunnels, where young faces blend with the shadows of fear, distressing scenes emerge showing how Hezbollah recruits boys barely out of childhood and steers them toward deadly outcomes.
These scenes were revealed in a video shared by the Israeli army’s spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, which the army says it obtained from Hezbollah tunnels. The footage shows teenagers recording their “final testaments” while still alive before embarking on suicide operations.
In a post on the platform X, Adraee said the clips “strip away Hezbollah’s mask,” stating that “sending young boys to commit suicide is not resistance.”
He added that “filming their wills before their death and labeling them as ‘martyrs’—according to their own terminology—while they are still alive constitutes a crime against humanitarian principles.”
The Israeli spokesperson went further, describing what happens inside these tunnels as a systematic transformation of youth into “deferred death projects,” with their images prepared and files assembled before their demise, which he characterized as a blatant exploitation of teenagers pushed toward an inevitable fate.
Message to the Lebanese
He also addressed a direct message to the Lebanese, especially mothers, urging them to “closely examine what is happening to their children,” asserting that the group operates “in the service of external agendas” and exploits the enthusiasm of youth to serve objectives that do not reflect Lebanon’s interests.
These accusations echo points raised by journalist Nicholas Blanford in a book published in 2011, in which he noted that hundreds of teenagers pass each year through camps organized by the Imam al-Mahdi Scouts in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa, where they receive training in military discipline and familiarity with weapons.
Blanford added that Hezbollah “does not officially accept fighters under the age of 18,” but that “basic military training begins at a much younger age,” which, according to this view, reflects an early pathway preparing teenagers for involvement in combat.
