Iran-backed Hezbollah stated on Wednesday that it launched an offensive at Israel, attacking its artillery positions with rockets, in what is said to be its first strike at its arch-rival following the series of pager blasts across Lebanon that injured thousands.
The death toll in the pager detonations has reached twelve, while nearly 3,000 including Hezbollah fighters and Iran's envoy to Beirut were injured. After the blasts, Hezbollah had vowed to give Israel "its fair punishment" as it blamed it for the blasts. A Hezbollag official had called the incident "the biggest security breach" for the group in its conflict with Israel that has been underway for nearly a year.
Over ten rocket launches were fired in the latest barrage into northern Israel. These rockets fell into open areas and also started a fire in the region's Manot area. These rockets are said to have been fired from Lebanon. Ahead of this, rocket and hostile aircraft infiltration sirens were also activated in the region, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
A senior Lebanese security source told news agency Reuters that the Israel's spy agency Mossad was behind the blasts. The source claimed that Mossad had planted explosives inside pagers that Hezbollah imported months before the detonations on Tuesday.
The Taiwanese pager maker Gold Apollo has denied producing the devices that exploded and instead said that they were made under licence by a Hungary-based company called BAC. According to the Reuters report, Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from the company, which were brought into the country earlier this year. However, founder Hsu Ching-Kuang said that the pagers were not theirs and that they only had Gold Apollo's sticker on them. The report further noted that the BAC Consulting, which Kuang claims made the pagers, was registered but had no physical presence.
Hezbollah fighters had been using pagers in a bid to evade location-tracking by Israel. The report, citing its senior Lebanese source, stated that the devices had been modified by Israel's spy service "at the production level". "The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It's very hard to detect it through any means". Around 3,000 pagers detonated when a coded message was sent to them, leading to the simultaneous explosions, Reuters reported.
Israel and Hezbollah have been engaged in cross-border warfare ever since the October 9 attack triggered the Gaza conflict. With the recent pager blasts, the situation in the Middle East has turned more volatile, as the Iran-backed group has pledged to retaliat against Israel.
Meanwhile, Israel Defence Forces stated that rocket and missile sirens were sounded after a UAV launched from Iraq was intercepted by IAF fighter jets over the Sea of Galilee area.