Israel’s Mossad spy agency planted explosives inside 5,000 pagers imported by Lebanese group Hezbollah months before Tuesday’s detonations that killed nine people, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.
The operation, with a trail running from Taiwan to Budapest, was an unprecedented Hezbollah security breach that saw thousands of pagers explode across Lebanon, wounding nearly 3,000 people, including many of the group’s fighters and Iran’s envoy to Beirut.
The pager blasts came at a time of mounting concern about tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, which have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the Gaza conflict erupted last October. Iran-backed Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, whose military declined to comment on the blasts.
As fears rise of an incursion into southern Lebanon and an escalation into an all-out regional conflict, FRANCE 24’s Genie Godula is joined by Hugh Lovatt, Senior Policy Fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations.