Hezbollah considered the battle of Bint Jbeil a remarkable victory. The IDF forces participating in the battle were vastly superior, both in terms of numbers and of firepower. According to Israeli estimates the towns were only defended by a company-sized force (100–140 men) and yet Hezbollah soldiers succeeded in holding four IDF brigades at bay. Hezbollah commanders later estimated that they were outnumbered 10 or 20 to one in the battles. The IDF often released conflicting estimates of the number of Hezbollah soldiers killed in the various clashes during the war. No overall estimate was published after the war. A semi-official Israeli study claimed that "dozens" of Hezbollah operatives were killed in the battle. The Winograd Commission only claimed that "a large number" were killed. Hezbollah has yet to publish official casualty statistics from the battle or indeed from the war itself.</ref> It is clear however that dozens of Hezbollah soldiers died in the battle. Local Hezbollah commanders told Lebanese Daily as-Safir that Bint Jbeil lost 18 soldiers while Aynata lost 14 in the battle. Among those killed were several commanders, including Khalid Bazzi, the overall Hezbollah commander of the Bint Jbeil area. A Hezbollah commander told as-Safir that most of the soldiers who died in the battle were killed by the shelling while only a "small number" died in the clashes with Israeli troops. Hezbollah usually dominated the battle field "because of the courage of the soldier, their steadfastness and knowledge of the terrain". But the total number of fatalities in the battles in the Bint Jbeil area (including the Battle of Maroun al-Ras) could well be higher than 32. Hezbollah sent reinforcements to the town during the war, including 40 members of the elite Special Forces unit.