The Battle of Ayta ash-Sha'b took place during the 2006 Lebanon War, when the Israel Defense Forces and the Islamic Resistance, the armed wing of Hezbollah, fought a 33 days battle for the town of Ayta ash-Sha'b and the neighboring villages of Ramiya, al-Qawzah and Dibil in southern Lebanon. The initial phase of the battle consisted of two and a half weeks of intense bombardment by air and artillery, followed by more than two weeks of intensive fighting in and around the town. The IDF deployed five brigades against an Hizbullah force consisting of litte more than half a company. Still the IDF failed to capture the town and suffered relatively heavy casualties in the process. Background On 12 July 2006, under the cover of mortar and rocket fire directed at Israeli communities and IDF positions, forces belonging to the Islamic Resistance launched a cross border raid into Israeli territory, killing three Israeli soldiers and abducting two, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. The abductors apparently headed for the town of Ayta ash-Sha'b, less than a kilometer from the site of the abduction. Nir Rosen writes that Ayta ash-Sha'b was defended by approximately 100 fighters, mainly local inhabitants. Some of the defenders of the town were not members of the Islamic Resistance or even of Hizbullah. According to Andrew Exum, the majority of the fighters were not "regular Hizballah fighters". Blanford agrees that most of the fighters were local residents, but that they were "no second-rate home guard. They were battle-hardened veterans,… many of them with specialist training in anti-armor missiles and sniping." According to a study supported by Israeli authorities, Hizbullah's military infrastructure in the village consisted of 60–70 Hizbullah operatives. The battle Ayta ash-Sha'b and other Lebanese border villages and Hizbullah outposts were immediately subjected to bombardment from aircraft and artillery, plus attack helicopters supporting Israeli ground forces. This would continue almost daily throughout the war. On the first day the IDF declared, somewhat optimistically, that "all Hezbollah outposts along the border were destroyed." First attempted incursion Less than two hours after the capture of the two soldiers, the IDF sent a force of tanks and armored personnel carriers across the border following a dirt track, through an olive grove called Khallat al-Warda, leading to Ayta ash-Sha'b. The force was ordered to capture a Hizbullah post and to take control of the exit roads from the town, in case