Spokesman confirms:

Netanyahu authorized pager attacks in Lebanon

Chaotic scenes after the simultaneous detonations in Beirut in mid-September(Bild: APA/AP)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given the go-ahead for the pager attacks in Lebanon that took place last September. This was announced by his spokesman on Sunday. At that time, a total of 39 people were killed and almost 30,000 others were injured. 

Netanyahu "confirmed on Sunday that he approved the pager operation in Lebanon," his spokesman Omer Dostri told the AFP news agency, referring to the mass explosion of pagers on September 18.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu(Bild: APA/AFP/POOL/Menahem Kahana)

Confession comes as no surprise
It was the first time that the Israeli government publicly acknowledged its authorship. The admission does not come as a surprise, as the attacks were immediately attributed to the Israeli foreign intelligence service Mossad.

Thousands of Hezbollah pagers exploded at the same time(Bild: x.com)

On September 19, there was another wave of attacks in which hundreds of walkie-talkie radios belonging to Hezbollah fighters exploded.

Sharp criticism of Israel
The attacks were sharply criticized internationally because even unsuspecting civilians were put in mortal danger by the exploding telecommunications devices.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the country of carrying out "attacks like a terrorist group". While international law experts disagreed on the permissibility of the attacks, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, described them as a war crime. "If the attacker is not in a position to assess the compatibility of the attack with the binding rules of international law, in particular the likely impact on the civilian population, the attack should not be carried out," he told the UN Security Council in September.

"International humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby traps in the form of seemingly harmless, portable objects specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material. Violence with the intention of spreading terror among the civilian population is a war crime," the Austrian continued.