Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, in a first public disclosure, that he had okayed a September attack on Hezbollah in which hundreds of communication devices exploded across Lebanon.
"Netanyahu confirmed Sunday that he greenlighted the pager operation in Lebanon," his spokesman, Omer Dostri, told journalists of the attacks.
Lebanese government officials and Hezbollah had previously blamed Israel for the blasts that dealt a major blow to the Iran-backed militant group and vowed revenge.
Hand-held devices used by Hezbollah operatives detonated two days in a row in supermarkets, on streets and at funerals in mid-September.
They killed nearly 40 people and wounded nearly 3,000, and preceded Israel's ongoing bombing assault and ground invasion of Lebanon.
More than 3,000 people have been killed in Lebanon since clashes between Hezbollah and Israel began in October 2023, according to the health ministry, including at least 1,964 since September 23, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
'Egregious war against humanity'
Lebanon said earlier this week that it had filed a complaint with the United Nations' labour agency over deadly attacks, blaming Israel.
Lebanese Labour Minister Mustafa Bayram had called the attack an "egregious war against humanity, against technology, against work," confirming that his country had filed the complaint with the International Labour Organization in Geneva.
"It's a very dangerous precedent," he had told journalists in the Swiss city at an event organised by the UN correspondents' association ACANU.
Bayram said it was "widely accepted internationally... that Israel was behind this heinous act."
"In a few minutes, more than 4,000 civilians fell, between martyrs and injured and maimed," he said, speaking through a translator.
Among the victims not killed, he said many people had "lost their fingers; some have totally lost their eyesight."
"We are in a situation where ordinary objects, objects you use in daily life, become dangerous and lethal," he said.
"If left unchecked, this crime could become normalised," he said, adding that filing the complaint was meant "to prevent such crimes from happening in the future."
"I consider it a moral obligation to my country and to the world."
How could sabotage cause these pagers to explode?
Back then, in September, a US official had confirmed that it was a planned operation by Israel, while multiple theories had emerged around how the attack might have been carried out.
Several experts who had spoken with The Associated Press explained how the explosions were most likely the result of supply-chain interference.
Very small explosive devices may have been built into the pagers prior to their delivery to Hezbollah, and then all remotely triggered simultaneously, possibly with a radio signal.
By the time of the attack, “the battery was probably half-explosive and half-actual battery," said Carlos Perez, director of security intelligence at TrustedSec.
A former British Army bomb disposal officer explained that an explosive device has five main components: A container, a battery, a triggering device, a detonator and an explosive charge.
“A pager has three of those already,” explained the ex-officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he now works as a consultant with clients in the Middle East.
“You would only need to add the detonator and the charge.”
After security camera footage appeared on social media purporting to show one of the pagers explode on a man’s hip in a Lebanese market, two munitions experts had offered opinions that corroborate that the blast appeared to be the result of a tiny explosive device.
“Looking at the video, the size of the detonation is similar to that caused by an electric detonator alone or one that incorporates an extremely small, high-explosive charge,” said Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordinance disposal expert.
This signals the involvement of a state actor, Moorhouse had said.
He added that Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, is the most obvious suspect to have the resources to carry out such an attack.
(With inputs from AFP and AP)
