Hezbollah admits no militants injured in Israel's pager attack have recovered

Telegraph

4 days ago

Hezbollah has admitted none of its fighters wounded in Israel's unprecedented pager attacks last year have properly recovered.
Thousands of rigged pagers belonging to the armed Lebanese militant group simultaneously exploded on Sept 17 2024, wounding 3,000 people and killing at least 12, including two children.
The remotely triggered plot took a decade of planning by Israel's Mossad spy agency and dealt a powerful blow to Iran's most powerful proxy, severely degrading its logistical capabilities and shattering morale.
It also left the Iran-backed group with the financial and psychological burden of assisting thousands needing long-term medical treatment.
A representative of Hezbollah's Association of Wounded told the Associated Press that none of the injured had 'fully recovered'.
The group, which had been firing rockets near-daily into Israel in support of its ally Hamas for nearly a year before the pager bombings, acknowledged most of the casualties were its fighters or personnel.
However, dozens of civilians were also harmed, many being relatives of the group's members or workers in Hezbollah-linked institutions. The exact number is still not known.
Israel lauded the attack as a show of its intelligence prowess and technological superiority, but the UN and other rights groups say it may have violated international law, claiming it was indiscriminate.
Israeli officials have rejected the accusation, saying the pagers had undergone testing to ensure only the person holding the device would be harmed.
But what Mossad could not control was who picked up the pagers.
Sarah Jaffal, a 21-year-old university graduate, had woken up on the morning of the attack to hear a family member's pager buzzing in the kitchen. Seconds later, it exploded in her hands.
She lost an eye and four fingers in the blast, which deeply scarred her face. She has had 45 surgeries so far and can barely see. 'I've put up with so much pain I never imagined I could tolerate,' she told the Associated Press.
Hussein Dheini, 12, suffered a similar fate when his father's booby-trapped pager exploded in his hands, costing him his right eye, several fingers, his teeth and the tip of his nose.
'Before, I used to spend a lot of time on my phone. I used to run and go to school.'
The boy, a member of the Hezbollah scouts, the group's youth movement, said he now spends his time going to Beirut for treatment.
Zeinab Mestrah, 26, who also lost an eye after a pager belonging to a relative blew up nearby, recalled how hospitals were overwhelmed with casualties.
It was like a 'slaughterhouse', the interior designer said. 'People didn't recognise each other. Families were shouting out their relatives' names to identify them.'
The day after the pager attacks, Hezbollah walkie-talkies exploded in another Israeli operation that killed at least 25 people and injured over 600, according to Lebanese health officials.
Days later, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, was assassinated and hundreds of his fighters, as well as civilians, were killed in an Israeli campaign of air strikes that ended with a ceasefire in November.
Hezbollah, mortally wounded by its war with Israel, was forced to end its military presence in southern Lebanon and the Lebanese army was charged with disbanding the armed group.
Despite last year's US-brokered truce, Israel still carries out sporadic strikes on Hezbollah targets. On Friday, the Israel Defense Forces claimed it killed an intelligence officer in the group's special operations force in a drone strike.
This week, the Lebanese government agreed to an end-of-year target for the group's full disarmament.