Lebanon pager blasts: A look at Israel's remote warfare history

A person is carried outside American University of Beirut Medical Center, after hundreds were injured and several killed when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon. (Photo/Reuters)

Hezbollah and the Lebanese government have blamed Israel for the nearly simultaneous detonation of hundreds of pagers in a country-wide attack that killed at least nine people and wounded nearly 3,000 others, according to officials.

Among those killed on Tuesday were the son of a prominent Hezbollah politician and an eight-year-old girl, according to Lebanon's health minister.

The attack came amid rising tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, who have exchanged fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since the October 7 raid by Hamas.

Iran's ambassador to Lebanon is among those wounded by the pager explosions.

Israel rarely takes responsibility for such attacks, and its military declined to comment on Tuesday. However, the country has a long history of carrying out 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 leaders in Beirut and Tehran were killed in deadly strikes within hours of each other. Hamas said Israel was behind the assassination of its top peace negotiator, 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.

April 2024

Two Iranian generals were killed in what Tehran 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 Israel continued its bombing campaign 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 programme, 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.

2010

The Stuxnet computer virus, discovered in 2010, disrupted and destroyed Iranian nuclear centrifuges. It was attributed to Israel.

2010

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a top Hamas member, was killed in a Dubai hotel room in an operation attributed to Israel's Mossad 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. Hezbollah blamed his killing on Israel.

2004

Hamas' spiritual leader, Ahmed Yassin, was killed in an Israeli helicopter strike while being pushed in his wheelchair. Yassin, who was paralysed 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' second-highest military leader, Salah Shehadeh, was killed by a one-tonne 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". was killed when he answered 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 Organisation military chief Khalil al-Wazir was killed in Tunisia. 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.

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Source: TRT