UP TO a thousand of Hezbollah’s best-trained fighters are still deployed around the rocky hills and valleys of Lebanon’s border district, most of them locals who know every contour of this forbidding terrain.

Their commanders have had six years since Israel’s withdrawal to prepare for this campaign. They have dug tunnels to hide their armoury and provide escape routes that electronic surveillance cannot penetrate. A senior Hezbollah official told The Times yesterday: “We knew this day was coming, and this time we were ready.”

With advanced Russian anti-tank missiles and long-range Iranian rockets they have slowed and harassed the region’s most sophisticated army, inflicting comparatively high casualties. Hezbollah’s arsenal is said to be dispersed widely in the south, hidden in garages, warehouses, workshops, caves and bunkers.

Israel has drones, helicopters and jets, but even though the response time to reach the site of a Katyusha rocket launch is only two minutes, by then the fighters have melted away. Some rockets are triggered by a timer and launched from metal frames hidden in olive groves, allowing the Hezbollah operators time to get clear.

Israel estimates that Hezbollah had 13,000 missiles and says that two thirds have been destroyed. Shia commanders do not reveal the number, but insist that their hit-and-run campaign can continue for another couple of months at 100 rockets a day. They will not say whether supplies are making it through from Syria; military experts in Beirut think it unlikely.

Of greater concern to Hezbollah is the loss of its mobile launchers and the difficulty of moving such vehicles around.

Fuel was stockpiled, wells were camouflaged to guarantee water and the commanders boast that what meagre food locals have they willingly give to the fighters. In the towns pummelled by Israel you hear only support for Hezbollah from surviving families.

The Hezbollah official said that the enemy could level every building but its fighters would be back. “We can wait it out longer than the Israeli tanks. We strike and reappear where the enemy least expects. Technology is no match for our spirit.”

Hezbollah fighters operate in mobile units of between 15 to 20. They are better armed, equipped and trained than the Lebanese Army. Volunteers are clamouring to join them, but officials say they don’t want them getting in the way.

The commanders are authorised to take autonomous decisions because of the difficulty of maintaining radio contact with their superiors and the need to respond swiftly to any incursion. Each unit includes a video camera and the film is rushed back to Beirut to be shown on Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV. They have their own communications system and a code to fool their more technologically advanced foe.

Two veteran guerrillas, Haj Rabieh and Abu Muhammed, holed up in the ruins of Srifa, just south of the Litani river yesterday, demonstrated how they use cheap walkie-talkies to stay in touch and baffle any Israeli eavesdroppers. Both are schoolteachers in quieter times.

Abu Muhammed said with a grin: “We take our chances and we take our precautions, too.” Asked how many fighters were in the area, he replied: “How many angels are there? We are present in the same numbers.”

The south, the men say, is split into military sectors. Fighters communicate using a code based on local and personal knowledge. “Haj Rabieh once loved a woman in the village,” Abu Muhammed said. “I could call him and say ‘let’s meet at the house of the woman who melted your heart’. How can the Israeli enemy understand that?”

In one day free of airstrikes, Hezbollah restored its organisation in the smashed southern suburbs of Beirut, shunting debris to barricade roads in the Heret Hreik district where the group had its headquarters. Gunmen monitored everyone trying to enter, including families coming to retrieve what little they could salvage from their homes.

Nasser Nahle, 45, a garage mechanic, is one of the diehards. “Israel can demolish every tower block but the day they stop bombing, our people will be back in a hour,” he said.

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