This episode of Panorama Today brings together a series of frontline testimonies—drawn from video recordings and accompanying narrative accounts—that document key episodes of the recent fighting across multiple southern Lebanese towns and front sectors. Through the voices of field officers and surviving fighters, the material captures the intensity of the clashes, the shifting conditions on the ground, and the individual acts of resolve that shaped each engagement. From the early incursions into Oudaisseh and the armored push toward Khiam, to the prolonged battles around the Prophet Shamoun shrine and the final stand of a lone young fighter in Markaba, these accounts trace the progression of operations as they unfolded in real time. While each story reflects a distinct battlefield and circumstance, together they form a composite picture of the broader confrontation—its scale, its human cost, and the steadfastness shown by those who held their positions under overwhelming pressure.
In this first video, the officer describes how three days after Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s martyrdom, the men in Oudaisseh were told to raise their readiness, and by the end of September the Israeli enemy had already turned several nearby areas into a closed military zone.
Artillery began pounding Oudaisseh, young men fell as martyrs, and then—at around two in the morning, in early October—the ground incursion into Lebanon started. A reconnaissance unit from Oketz crept in through the wooded areas of southern Oudaisseh, unaware that a small group of fighters had prepared an ambush for them in Al-Mu‘tadila. What followed was a long, violent clash that lasted from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m., during which three fighters managed, through sheer courage, to overwhelm the entire reconnaissance force. As the battle intensified, airstrikes hit the command room, killing several of the men, yet Haidar Ali and his companions continued to fight, calling for fire support while Israeli soldiers remained trapped above them.
Reinforcements tried to reach the village, some were struck, others pushed on, and by the time they arrived in the square, their sudden appearance stunned the advancing Israeli forces. Heavy exchanges followed, and as the enemy failed to extract its own wounded, it unleashed waves of random strikes across Oudaisseh, killing the remaining fighters in the village. In the days that followed, even ambulances and rescue crews attempting to recover the martyrs’ bodies were targeted by drones, leading to the death of eight civil defense members on October 3rd.
From the early hours of that morning, the clash around the southern edge of Khiam unfolded under unbroken drone surveillance, yet the men held their positions, waiting for the enemy’s movements to reveal themselves. By late afternoon the weather turned violently—summer giving way to sudden winter rain—slowing the Israeli advance and pushing their armored vehicles toward the garage by the mosque, exactly where the fighters expected them. Through camera feeds the movement of a Merkava tank became clear, and within minutes the men re-positioned, closing the distance to barely eighty meters before firing the first shot that lodged beneath the tank’s turret. As the armor pushed deeper between the square and the old detention area, pressure mounted inside the neighborhood: communications faltered, drones circled, and the grinding of tanks and bulldozers echoed through the alleys. Four fighters used the cover of the storm to plant explosive charges along the northern approach, and when the bulldozer and its accompanying tanks reached the kill zone the ambush was triggered—an explosion followed by a burst of fire that sent thick fuel smoke rolling over the street, allowing the men to slip from the house and reengage at close range. The Israeli crews, shaken and disoriented, hesitated to push forward, and the group withdrew through an olive grove to take up a new defensive line. By the next day, just as they prepared to continue the engagement, the announcement of a ceasefire arrived hours after dozens of operations, including strikes deep inside Israel, underscored the scale and intensity of the fighting that had led up to that moment.
At the start of the battle, around twenty-eight brothers were positioned in the town, most of them men who had been defending the area for years. Between September 17 and November 14, 2024, the town endured more than twenty-two airstrikes and relentless artillery fire, which intensified in the days leading up to the clashes. On September 15, an Israeli force advanced toward the hill of the Prophet Shamoun shrine, climbing to its rooftop and sparking a direct confrontation with Dr. Mohsen Mustafa Korani—Hajj Samer—who was stationed at the site. The clash resulted in the killing of an Israeli sergeant from the Golani Brigade and the wounding of several soldiers, while repeated attempts to evacuate them were met with continuous resistance fire. The fighters managed to destroy a Merkava tank, a military vehicle, and later targeted a bulldozer near the mosque. The engagement ended around two in the afternoon with the martyrdom of Hassan Kouran, Hajj Samer, and the withdrawal of the Israeli force under smoke cover and heavy shelling.
The next day, September 16, resistance fighters on the northeastern front of the shrine set up an ambush. When Israeli soldiers walked into the kill zone, the fighters engaged them at point-blank range with rifles and rockets, inflicting confirmed casualties. The prolonged clash resulted in the martyrdom of Abdul Karim Mohammad Daher (Abu Hadi), Ahmad Khudr, and Abbas Mahmoud (Ali), all of whom fought with exceptional resolve. That evening, after two explosions near the shrine, smoke rose from the strike on an Israeli tank. With many of their comrades fallen, the remaining fighters repositioned to another defensive point. By then, only two men were left in that sector, yet they continued to hold back entire Israeli squads on their own.
On the night of October 24, 2024, a call reached the Islamic Resistance operations room in the Hajar sector from an eighteen-year-old fighter dug in at the southern edge of Markaba. He had refused an order to fall back, insisting he would stand his ground and continue fighting. When the operations commander addressed him and asked if they should switch to coded communication, the young man replied that even the device he was using had been taken from the friend martyred beside him. When asked to identify his position, he simply said he was “next to those who left us”—by the cemetery. The officers urged him to withdraw toward the inner villages, even considering forming a reinforcement unit after learning that the enemy had already taken positions inside the town square, but the boy remained adamant. He knew the terrain, he was steady under pressure, and he was the last line after most of the fighters in Markaba had been killed or captured under heavy strikes. When the commander pressed him again to retreat, he answered, “I’m sorry, I can’t carry out that order,” explaining that nothing was wrong with him physically, only that he would not pull back—he would not abandon Imam Hussein. The operations officer tried to warn him that the Israeli force was extremely close, but the young man replied, “Yes—and I’m waiting for them.” When asked whether he had water or supplies, he answered that his pouch was empty. Minutes later, gunfire broke out from Markaba as he opened fire on the approaching soldiers and fought continuously for nearly five hours. Israeli media soon announced intense, face-to-face combat with Hezbollah fighters in the area near Misgav Am, just four kilometers away. Around midnight, the gunfire faded. The commander called for him over the radio, but there was no response—the boy had fallen. After the ceasefire, resistance fighters recovered his body, finding spent casings scattered around him and bullet impacts on the walls of the square, silent evidence of a long and solitary stand.
Source: Al-Manar English Website
