Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted that he had “okayed” the pager assaults in Lebanon, which had killed almost 40 and wounded 3,000 Iran-backed Hezbollah members in September.
“Netanyahu confirmed Sunday that he greenlighted the pager operation in Lebanon,” his spokesperson Omer Dostri informed information company AFP.
Hundreds of pagers exploded in Hezbollah strongholds on September 17 and 18 – which Iran and Hezbollah blamed on Israel. A number of the Hezbollah members who have been injured reportedly misplaced their fingers, whereas some misplaced their eyesight.
Hezbollah had known as the blasts an “Israeli breach” of its communications community and vowed to avenge the assault.
The pagers have been utilized by Hezbollah members as a low-tech technique of communication to evade Israeli location-tracking.
The blasts got here simply hours after Israel introduced it was broadening the goals of the conflict sparked by Hamas’ October 7 assaults to incorporate its combat in opposition to the group’s ally Hezbollah alongside the nation’s border with Lebanon.
This week, Lebanon had filed a grievance with the United Nations Labour Company over the lethal assault, calling it an “egregious conflict in opposition to humanity”.
Israel and Hezbollah have been combating throughout the Lebanese border because the conflict in Gaza erupted after Hamas attacked Israeli cities on October 7 final yr. Since then, a number of Hezbollah fighters, together with former chief of the Iran-backed group Hassan Nasrallah, have been killed. Final month, Israel’s military additionally confirmed that it “eradicated” Hezbollah’s Hashem Safieddine, an obvious successor of Nasrallah, in a strike in southern Beirut.
On Thursday, Israel carried out airstrikes on Hezbollah’s predominant bastion in south Beirut, with one raid hitting an space close to Lebanon’s solely worldwide airport – inflicting minor harm to among the airport’s buildings, together with flag service Center East Airways’ premises.
Since October final yr, greater than 3,000 individuals have been killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon.