Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved the September attacks on communications equipment used by members of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah movement in Lebanonhis office announced on Sunday. Netanyahu officially admitted for the first time that Israel was behind the attacks, which claimed lives and injured hundreds. TASR informs about it according to the report of the AFP agency.
Until now, Israel has not publicly claimed responsibility for the attacks in which thousands of small personal pagers and radios exploded on the territory of Lebanon and in Syria on September 17 and 18. These communication devices belonged to Hezbollah and the attacks on them they claimed 39 dead and almost 3000 wounded. Among the victims were mainly fighters of this movement.
Netanyahu confirmed at a cabinet meeting on Sunday that the operation targeting the pagers, as well as the killing of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an attack in Beirut, took place despite the disapproval of high-ranking representatives of the Ministry of Defense and people from the political leadership, The Times of Israel (TOI) newspaper reported.
According to TOI, the Israeli Prime Minister openly expressed himself in this way to the commanders of the army and intelligence services and the recently dismissed Minister of Defense Joav Galant. Back in September, Sky News Arabia claimed that the Mossad, Israel’s secret service, was behind the coordinated explosions of the pocket pagers, which managed to get hold of them before Hezbollah began using them. According to television, Mossad agents attached the high explosive PETN to the batteries and later detonated the device by heating the battery remotely.
