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Three chareidi teenagers who became stranded overnight on the cliffs of Nachal Darga were safely rescued Monday morning in a coordinated aerial operation involving emergency and rescue forces.

The rescue was carried out by an airborne team from the Lehava unit, working together with a police helicopter from the aerial division, after the teens were stuck for hours on a steep and dangerous slope at a location known as Point 12 in the Darga cliffs.

The boys had set out on a Chol Hamoed hike despite the ongoing war and found themselves unable to continue along the route, leaving them stranded in difficult terrain throughout the night.

Rescuers executed a complex extraction under challenging conditions, with the helicopter hovering low to the ground in a maneuver known as “hovering,” allowing the team to lift the teens into the aircraft.

Once the rescue was completed, the helicopter transported them to a designated evacuation point, where medical personnel were waiting. The teens were found to be in good condition and did not require hospitalization, leaving the scene on their own.

Police said the incident was first reported at 1:30 a.m., when it was learned that three youths were stuck along the southern slope of Nachal Darga with no ability to proceed. A small team of volunteers from the Megillos Dead Sea Rescue Unit established contact with the teens and pinpointed their location. It was then decided that the rescue would be carried out at first light.

At daybreak, a police helicopter was dispatched to locate and extract the teens, while an additional support team from the unit’s technical rescue division was positioned at the Nachal Darga landing zone as backup.

The operation was conducted in coordination with multiple agencies, including the IDF’s height rescue division, the Israel Police air unit, the Lehava unit, regional fire and rescue services from the Binyamin station, United Hatzalah, and volunteers from the regional rescue unit.

IDF forces from the Nachal Brigade have eliminated the three terrorists responsible for the deaths of four elite reconnaissance soldiers in southern Lebanon, in close-range combat operations, the IDF confirmed.

Troops from the Nachal Reconnaissance Unit have been continuing operations in the southern Lebanon sector, where they are engaged in targeting terrorists, locating weapons, and dismantling terror infrastructure as part of ongoing military activity.

During these operations, the unit successfully tracked down and killed the three terrorists responsible for the deaths of Capt. Noam Madmoni, Sgt. First Class Ben Cohen, Sgt. First Class Maxim Antis, and Sgt. First Class Gilad Harel z”l.

The terrorists were eliminated in direct, face-to-face combat, and subsequent intelligence verification confirmed that they were indeed the individuals behind the deadly attack on the four soldiers.

The IDF emphasized that its forces will continue operating in southern Lebanon with the goal of protecting Israeli civilians, particularly residents of the northern communities.

Commenting on the developments, Nachal Brigade Commander Col. Erik Moyal said, “Our mission is clear — to defend the residents of the north. We paid a heavy price in recent days with the loss of four reconnaissance soldiers, but we succeeded in eliminating those terrorists and will continue moving forward.”

Iran has shifted to a decentralized, guerrilla-style method of warfare similar to Hezbollah, increasing attempts to target aircraft with dispersed missile launches, according to an Israeli Air Force official, as aerial operations continue under heightened risk.

The development comes in the wake of last Friday’s downing of an American fighter jet over Iran and the subsequent rescue of its crew, underscoring the dangers facing air forces operating in the region.

A senior source in the Israeli Air Force told Walla that from the very beginning of Operation “Shaagas HaAri,” and continuing through the present, the missions have involved significant and ongoing danger. He noted that new threats are constantly emerging, requiring continuous effort to detect and neutralize them.

“There is relentless, difficult, and deep work in the Air Force, 24/7, to identify and locate threats (surface-to-air missiles). Every day, new threats appear like mushrooms after the rain, with new capabilities that the Iranians are bringing into the arena during the war. We experience this constantly. We are in a learning race with a smart enemy.”

He added that Israeli aircraft continue to operate under persistent threat conditions. “We are flying under threat. We flew throughout March and April, and we continue to fly under threat. This is a daily war. We must be able to reflect the threats and not fly into them — not to send our pilots and aircraft into danger — all while understanding that there are missions that must be carried out.”

According to the official, Iran has increasingly adopted a guerrilla-style approach, launching missiles from multiple dispersed locations rather than relying on centralized systems. “In the end, such a missile can hit an aircraft. Its efficiency as a system is lower, but in the end, one missile hitting a plane is enough to bring it down.” He noted that Israeli aircraft are indeed facing numerous surface-to-air missile launches from the ground.

Addressing the effort to neutralize these threats, the source said that the campaign against Iran’s surface-to-air missile systems is ongoing and far from complete. “It was not decided in the opening strike. The opening strike gave us an excellent starting point, but there are risks, and just as an American aircraft was downed, we too could lose an aircraft.”