Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah called the two days of deadly blasts linked to electronic devices in Lebanon this week an “act of war” by Israel, as the Israeli military stepped up strikes on southern Lebanon, flew warplanes over Beirut, and approved plans for the next stage of the conflict along the border between the two countries.
“The enemy transgressed all boundaries and redlines,” Nasrallah said in a widely anticipated speech Thursday evening local time about the attacks, which killed at least 37 people and injured nearly 3,000 when pagers, walkie-talkies and other devices exploded simultaneously on Tuesday and Wednesday across Lebanon. The attacks were “a major assault on Lebanon, its security and sovereignty, a war crime — an act of war,” he added, and they dealt an “unprecedented blow” to Hezbollah and Lebanon.
As he spoke, in a televised address, the rumble of planes and large sonic booms could be heard over the Lebanese capital. But Nasrallah also struck a note of defiance, saying the group’s operations would not stop until Israel ended its war in Gaza.
Israeli authorities, who rarely discuss operations in other countries, declined to comment on whether Israel was responsible. But the sophisticated and complex operation bore the hallmarks of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, which has a history of carrying out targeted assassinations abroad.
U.S. officials have acknowledged Israel was behind the attack. Two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject said the Israelis did not inform the United States about the specifics before the attack took place but told Washington afterward through intelligence channels.
Detonating explosives in civilian areas — supermarkets, houses, crowded streets — was a “crime,” Nasrallah said, and could have killed thousands more people than it ultimately did. But many compromised pagers had been switched off, were lying away from their targets or were sitting in storage, he said. The devices that exploded were largely not carried by senior officials, he added, and said some belonged to health workers.