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Israel has a long history of pulling off complex attacks like the exploding pagers

Israel has a long history of pulling off complex attacks like the exploding pagers
Police officers inspect a car inside of which a hand-held pager exploded, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 18 September 2024

Israel has a long history of pulling off complex attacks like the exploding pagers

Israel has a long history of pulling off complex attacks like the exploding pagers
  • Israel rarely takes responsibility for such attacks, and its military declined to comment Tuesday

JERUSALEM: Hezbollah and the Lebanese government were quick to blame Israel for the nearly simultaneous detonation of hundreds of pagers used by the militant group’s members in an attack Tuesday that killed at least nine people and wounded nearly 3,000 others, according to officials.
Many of those hit were members of militant group Hezbollah, but it wasn’t immediately clear if others also carried the pagers. Among those killed were the son of a prominent Hezbollah politician and an 8-year-old girl, according to Lebanon’s health minister.
The attack came amid rising tensions between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which have exchanged fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that sparked the war in Gaza. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon was among those injured by the pager explosions.
Israel rarely takes responsibility for such attacks, and its military declined to comment Tuesday. However, the country has a long history of carrying out sophisticated remote operations, ranging from intricate cyberattacks to remote-controlled machine guns targeting leaders in drive-by shootings, suicide drone attacks, and the detonation of explosions in secretive underground Iranian nuclear facilities.
Here is a look at previous operations that have been attributed to Israel:
July 2024
Two major militant leaders in Beirut and Tehran were killed in deadly strikes within hours of each other. Hamas said Israel was behind the assassination of its supreme leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Iran’s capital. Although Israel didn’t acknowledge playing a role in that attack, it did claim responsibility for a deadly strike hours earlier on Fouad Shukur, a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut.
July 2024
Israel targeted Hamas’ shadowy military commander, Mohammed Deif, in a massive strike in the crowded southern Gaza Strip. The strike killed at least 90 people, including children, according to local health officials. The Israeli military said in August that Deif was killed in the attack, though Hamas previously claimed he survived.
April 2024
Two Iranian generals were killed in what Iran said was an Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Syria. The deaths led Iran to launch an unprecedented attack on Israel that involved about 300 missiles and drones, most of which were intercepted.
January 2024
An Israeli drone strike in Beirut killed Saleh Arouri, a top Hamas official in exile, as Israeli troops fight the militant group in Gaza.
December 2023
Seyed Razi Mousavi, a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria, was killed in a drone attack outside of Damascus. Iran blamed Israel.
2021
An underground nuclear facility in central Iran was hit with explosions and a devastating cyberattack that caused rolling blackouts. Iran accused Israel of carrying out the attack as well as several others against Iranian nuclear facilities using explosive drones in the ensuing years.
2020
In one of the most prominent assassinations targeting Iran’s nuclear program, a top Iranian military nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was killed by a remote-controlled machine gun while traveling in a car outside Tehran. Iran blamed Israel.
2019
An Israeli airstrike hit the home of Bahaa Abu el-Atta, a senior Islamic Jihad commander in the Gaza Strip, killing him and his wife.
2012
Ahmad Jabari, head of Hamas’ armed wing, was killed when an airstrike targets his car. His death sparked an eight-day war between Hamas and Israel.
2010
The Stuxnet computer virus, discovered in 2010, disrupted and destroyed Iranian nuclear centrifuges. It was widely believed to be a joint US-Israeli creation.
2010
Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, a top Hamas operative, was killed in a Dubai hotel room in an operation attributed to the Mossad spy agency but never acknowledged by Israel. Many of the 26 supposed assassins were caught on camera disguised as tourists.
2008
Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s military chief, was killed when a bomb planted in his car exploded in Damascus. Mughniyeh was accused of engineering suicide bombings during Lebanon’s civil war and of planning the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a US Navy diver was killed. Hezbollah blamed his killing on Israel. His son Jihad Mughniyeh was killed in an Israeli strike in 2015.
2004
Hamas’ spiritual leader, Ahmed Yassin, was killed in an Israeli helicopter strike while being pushed in his wheelchair. Yassin, who was paralyzed in a childhood accident, was among the founders of Hamas in 1987. His successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, was killed in an Israeli airstrike less than a month later.
2002
Hamas’s second-highest military leader, Salah Shehadeh, was killed by a one-ton bomb dropped on an apartment building in Gaza City.
1997
Mossad agents tried to kill the head of Hamas at the time, Khaled Mashaal, in Amman, Jordan. Two agents entered Jordan using fake Canadian passports and poison Mashaal by placing a device near his ear. They were captured shortly afterward and Jordan’s king threatened to void a still-fresh peace accord if Mashaal died. Israel ultimately dispatched an antidote, and the Israeli agents were returned home. Mashaal remains a senior figure in Hamas.
1996
Yahya Ayyash, nicknamed the “engineer” for his mastery in building bombs for Hamas, was killed by answering a rigged phone in Gaza. His assassination triggered a series of deadly bus bombings in Israel.
1995
Islamic Jihad founder Fathi Shikaki was shot in the head in Malta in an assassination widely believed to have been carried out by Israel.
1988
Palestine Liberation Organization military chief Khalil Al-Wazir was killed in Tunisia. Better known as Abu Jihad, he had been PLO chief Yasser Arafat’s deputy. In 2012, military censors allowed an Israeli paper to reveal details of the Israeli raid for the first time.
1973
Israeli commandos shot a number of PLO leaders in their apartments in Beirut, in a nighttime raid led by Ehud Barak, who later became Israel’s top army commander and prime minister. The operation was part of a string of Israeli assassinations of Palestinian leaders that were carried out in retaliation for the killings of 11 Israeli coaches and athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.


UN to add nutrients to second round of Gaza polio vaccinations

UN to add nutrients to second round of Gaza polio vaccinations
Updated 39 sec ago

UN to add nutrients to second round of Gaza polio vaccinations

UN to add nutrients to second round of Gaza polio vaccinations
UNITED NATIONS: The second round of a vaccination campaign to protect 640,000 children in Gaza against polio will also deliver micronutrients — essential vitamins and minerals — and conduct nutritional screening, a senior UN Children’s Fund official said.
Discussions are also underway about the feasibility of adding further vaccinations to the campaign, including a measles immunization, said Ted Chaiban, UNICEF’s deputy executive director for humanitarian action and supply operations.
“There are over 44,000 children born in the last year and who haven’t received their basic immunization,” he said on Thursday.
The first round of the polio vaccination campaign, which began on Sept. 1, reached its target of 90 percent of children under 10 years of age, the head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said on Monday.
It was carried out in phases over two weeks during humanitarian pauses in the fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas. A second round of the polio vaccinations has to be carried out within four weeks.
The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed last month that a baby was partially paralyzed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
A high risk of famine persists across Gaza as long as the war continues and humanitarian access is restricted, according to an assessment by a global hunger monitor published in June.
“In the same way that we’ve been able to reach all children with polio vaccines, we need to move and use the same modality to reach children with their basic vaccines, with some of the nutrition and hygiene interventions that are essential to save their lives,” Chaiban told reporters after visiting Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.
“Those are lifesaving interventions and the parties have shown that they can line up when necessary. It needs to happen again,” he said.

Blinken urges against ‘escalatory actions’ in Mideast

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives to deliver remarks.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives to deliver remarks.
Updated 24 min ago

Blinken urges against ‘escalatory actions’ in Mideast

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives to deliver remarks.
  • France, US are united in calling for restraint and urging de-escalation when it comes to Middle East in general and when it comes to Lebanon in particular: Blinken

PARIS: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken Thursday urged against “escalatory actions by any party” in the Middle East, following the explosions of devices of Lebanese group Hezbollah blamed on Israel.
“France and the United States are united in calling for restraint and urging de-escalation when it comes to the Middle East in general and when it comes to Lebanon in particular,” Blinken said after talks in Paris with his French counterpart Stephane Sejourne.
Blinken said this was especially important at a time when the international community was continuing work to agree a ceasefire in Gaza to end the conflict between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas.
“We continue to work to get a ceasefire for Gaza over the finish line... We believe that remains both possible and necessary. But meanwhile we don’t want to see any escalatory actions by any party that makes that more difficult,” Blinken said.
Sejourne, making one of his final public appearances ahead of a cabinet reshuffle that will see him sent to Brussels as France’s new EU commissioner, said both France and the United States were “very worried about the situation” in the Middle East.
He said both the United States and France were coordinating to “send messages of de-escalation” to the parties.
“Lebanon would not recover from a total war,” he said.
Fears of a major war on Israel’s northern border have increased after thousands of Hezbollah operatives’ communication devices exploded across Lebanon, killing 37 people and wounding nearly 3,000 more across two days.


Israeli planes bomb southern Lebanon after radio blasts

Israeli planes bomb southern Lebanon after radio blasts
Updated 19 September 2024

Israeli planes bomb southern Lebanon after radio blasts

Israeli planes bomb southern Lebanon after radio blasts
  • Attacks on Hezbollah's communications equipment killed 37, wounded around 3,000 in past two days 
  • Israel says its conflict with Hezbollah, like war in Gaza, is part of a wider regional confrontation with Iran

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM: Israel bombed southern Lebanon on Thursday and said it had thwarted an Iranian-led assassination plot after explosions in booby-trapped radios and pagers in the past two days caused bloody havoc in the ranks of its arch-foe Hezbollah.

The attacks on Hezbollah’s communications equipment killed 37 people and wounded around 3,000, raising fears that a full-blown war was imminent. The action also sowed disarray across Lebanon as panicked residents abandoned their mobile phones.

“This isn’t a small matter, it’s war. Who can even secure their phone now? When I heard about what happened yesterday, I left my phone on my motorcycle and walked away,” said Mustafa Sibal on a street in Beirut.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied being behind the attacks but multiple security sources have said they were carried out by its spy agency Mossad.

The Lebanese army said on Thursday it was blowing up pagers and suspicious telecom devices in controlled blasts in different areas. It called on citizens to report any suspicious devices.

Lebanese authorities banned walkie-talkies and pagers from being taken on flights from Beirut airport until further notice, the National News Agency reported. Such devices were also banned from being shipped by air.

In Beirut on Thursday, a distant roar in the skies could be heard from what state media said was Israeli warplanes breaking the sound barrier — a noise that has become common in recent months.

Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel on the day after the Oct. 7 cross-border attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas which triggered the Gaza war, and since then constant exchanges of fire have occurred, although neither side has allowed this to escalate into a full-scale war.

Israel said its warplanes struck villages in southern Lebanon overnight, and a security source and Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV reported airstrikes near the border began again on Thursday just after midday.

Hand-held radios used by Hezbollah detonated on Wednesday across Lebanon’s south.

The previous day, hundreds of pagers — used by Hezbollah to evade mobile phone surveillance — exploded at once, killing 12 people including two children, and injuring more than 2,300.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati called on the United Nations Security Council to take a firm stand to stop what he called Israel’s “aggression” and “technological war” against his country.

Israel says its conflict with Hezbollah, like its war in Gaza against Hamas, is part of a wider regional confrontation with Iran, which sponsors both groups as well as armed movements in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

Assassination plot

Also on Thursday, Israeli security forces said that an Israeli businessman had been arrested last month after attending at least two meetings in Iran where he discussed assassinating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the defense minister or the head of the Shin Bet spy agency.

Last week, Shin Bet uncovered what it said was a plot by Hezbollah to assassinate former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.

Israel has been accused of assassinations including a blast in Tehran that killed the leader of Hamas and another in a Beirut suburb that killed a senior Hezbollah commander within hours of each other in July.

Despite the events of the past few days, a spokesperson for the UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon said the situation along the frontier had “not changed much in terms of exchanges of fire between the parties.”

“There was an intensification last week. This week it is more or less the same. There are still exchanges of fire. It is still worrying, still concerning, and the rhetoric is high,” the spokesperson, Andrea Tenenti, said.

Tens of thousands of people have had to flee the Israel-Lebanon border area on both sides since the hostilities began in October.

Shifting focus

The Israeli military said its overnight air strikes hit Hezbollah targets in Chihine, Tayibe, Blida, Meiss El Jabal, Aitaroun and Kfarkela in southern Lebanon, as well as a Hezbollah weapons storage facility in the area of Khiam.

On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the war was moving into a new phase, with more resources and military units being shifted to the northern border.

According to Israeli officials, the forces being deployed there include the 98th Division, an elite formation including commando and paratrooper elements that has been fighting in Gaza.


Hezbollah chief says group suffered ‘major’ blow in device blasts

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah addresses Lebanon from an undisclosed location on September 19, 2024. (AFP)
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah addresses Lebanon from an undisclosed location on September 19, 2024. (AFP)
Updated 19 September 2024

Hezbollah chief says group suffered ‘major’ blow in device blasts

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah addresses Lebanon from an undisclosed location on September 19, 2024. (AFP)
  • Nasrallah struck a defiant tone, warning that Israel would receive “just punishment” for the attacks
  • Describing the attacks as a possible “act of war,” he said Israel would face “tough retribution and just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not“

BEIRUT: Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged Thursday his powerful group had suffered an “unprecedented” blow when thousands of operatives’ communication devices exploded in attacks it blamed on Israel.
Israel has not commented on the attacks that killed 37 people and wounded nearly 3,000 across Lebanon over two days but has said it will widen the scope of its war in Gaza to include the Lebanon front.
Delivering a speech after the attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday, which plunged Lebanon into panic, Nasrallah struck a defiant tone, warning that Israel would receive “just punishment” for the attacks.
Describing the attacks as a possible “act of war,” he said Israel would face “tough retribution and just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not.”
“It could be a war crime or a declaration of war,” he said of the attacks, which he branded a “massacre.”
Nasrallah also vowed to keep up Hezbollah’s fight against Israel until a ceasefire in Gaza is reached.
“The Lebanese front will not stop until the aggression on Gaza stops” despite “all this blood spilt,” he said.
Nasrallah addressed Israeli officials’ promises to return thousands of Israelis displaced by exchanges of fire across the border with Lebanon to their homes.
“You will not be able to return the people of the north to the north,” he said, warning that “no military escalation, no killings, no assassinations and no all-out war can return residents to the border.”
Hezbollah is an ally of Palestinian militant group Hamas, which on October 7 launched an unprecedented attack on Israel that sparked Gaza’s deadliest ever war.
Up until now, the focus of Israel’s firepower had been on Gaza.
But Israel’s northern border with Lebanon has seen exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants almost every day since October.
The violence has killed hundreds of people, mostly fighters, on the Lebanese side, and dozens on the Israeli side.
Israeli warplanes broke the sound barrier over Beirut as Nasrallah spoke, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said, with AFP correspondents in Beirut reporting loud booms.
Nasrallah announced the launch of an internal probe into the attacks, which experts and some Israeli media have said bear all the hallmarks of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.


EU’s Borrell says Lebanon attacks aimed to ‘spread terror’

EU’s Borrell says Lebanon attacks aimed to ‘spread terror’
Updated 19 September 2024

EU’s Borrell says Lebanon attacks aimed to ‘spread terror’

EU’s Borrell says Lebanon attacks aimed to ‘spread terror’
  • “The indiscriminate method used is unacceptable due to the inevitable and heavy collateral damages among civilians,” Borrell said
  • At least 37 people were killed and more than 3,000 wounded

BEIRUT: The EU foreign policy chief condemned attacks which targeted mobile communication devices used by Hezbollah this week, saying whoever was behind them aimed “to spread terror in Lebanon,” a statement from the EU’s Beirut delegation said on Thursday.
“The indiscriminate method used is unacceptable due to the inevitable and heavy collateral damages among civilians, and the broader consequences for the entire population, including fear and terror, and the collapse of hospitals,” Josep Borrell said.
At least 37 people were killed and more than 3,000 wounded when first pagers, then walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members exploded in two waves of attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Lebanon and Hezbollah say Israel carried out the attack. Israel has not claimed responsibility.
Hezbollah, a heavily armed group backed by Iran, and Israel have been trading fire across the Lebanese-Israeli border for almost a year in a conflict triggered by the Gaza war.