Armed strength of hezbollah

In 2006 the British|Britannic| newspaper Financial Times published an interesting article about Hezbollah rocket potential. Referring to western experts and reconnaissance sources newspaper specifies|indicate| that this extremist group has an enormous arsenal of rocket armaments near|arming| 10-12 thousand units in number.

Among this rank there are rockets, so-called in the West “Katusha”, which are used to fire upon Northern Israel. Calling them “Katusha” is wrong as these are Chinese multi-barrelled rocket launchers modified in Iran. Soviet rocket complexes of 70-th served as a model.

However, in opinion of experts of London Institute for Strategic Studies, Hezbollah has more perfect rockets, like Chinese designed C-802 Silkworm guided missile, which was used to attack Israeli navy corvette in 2006. According to Financial Times, Israel supposes that Hezbollah has even 200 km-range missiles Zelzal, capable to reach Tel-Aviv. To the specialists` opinion, during few months Hezbollah accumulated military weapons which were supplied mainly by Iran through Lebanese-Syrian border.

Today the armament of Hezbollah includes more than two hundred of reactive systems of volley fire, Iranian-made anti-ship missiles C-802, the missiles Fajar, Raad, anti-tank guided missiles Milan, Soviet missiles Konkurs, Metis-M, Russian-made missiles Kornet and grenade launchers RPG-29. In addition to them Hezbollah possibly has some unguided Iranian heavy artillery rockets Zelzal-2 and thus is capable of attacking central|center| regions of Israel.

Today’s overall strength of Hezbollah is about 5 000 persons and the organization is financed mainly by Iran, which gives to Hezbollah about 100 million dollars annually.