Israel took a page from the American playbook this evening, dropping 23 tons of explosives on a bunker in southern Beirut where the IDF believes top Hezbollah leadership to be hiding. Preliminary bomb-damage assessment seems optimistic:

IAF fighter jets dropped over 20 tons in bombs late Wednesday night on a Hizbullah bunker, possibly the hiding place of the group's leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, in the Burj al-Arjana refugee camp in southeast Beirut. It was still unclear who was in the bunker at the time and what their fate was, but IDF sources said the bunker was totally destroyed and that all that was left was a crater.

The IDF obtained intelligence information late Wednesday night that Hizbullah leaders possibly including Nasrallah had taken refuge inside the bunker. A wave of aircraft immediately took to the air and dropped 23 tons of explosives on the bunker.

IDF sources would not confirm that Nasrallah was in the bunker at the time, but said that high-ranking Hizbullah leaders were inside, and that it appeared that the attack was successful.

Fox News just reported that Hezbollah's Al-Manar television has just gone on air to deny that the IDF killed any of the terrorist group's leaders. However, at this moment, no Hezbollah leader has made any statement directly to the media, including Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah. If any were inside the bunker, they likely have made their last statement; the BDA shows nothing left but a big crater.

Hopefully they had better luck targeting Nasrallah than we did targeting Saddam in the opening days of the war. Cutting off the head and the shoulders of Hezbollah might cripple the organization enough to disrupt all of its communications, especially its political ties to Syria and Iran. I'll update this as information becomes available.

UPDATE: Al-Manar says the site was a mosque, under construction:

Hezbollah later denied that a leadership bunker was hit, saying the strike targeted a mosque that was under construction and no one was killed.

The group issued a statement saying "no Hezbollah leaders or elements were killed in the strike."

"The strike hit a building that was under construction for a mosque," said the statement, issued on the group's Al-Manar TV and faxed to The Associated Press.

But as of yet, none of the Hezbollah leaders have appeared on television ...

UPDATE II: One of the reasons given for the lack of confirmation at this point explains a lot about the war itself:

Hizbullah has a headquarters compound in Bourj al-Barajneh that is off limits to the Lebanese police and army, so security officials could not confirm the strike.

Got that? The Lebanese police and army are not allowed to enter onto its own land. That's not much of an excuse for a state, especially given that the land is in the capital city of Lebanon.

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