‘We will reach everyone’: how Israel hunted Nasrallah

An Israeli Hermes 450 UAV drone flies over Beirut, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024. (AP)
Short Url
Updated 30 September 2024
Follow

‘We will reach everyone’: how Israel hunted Nasrallah

  • Analysts said the operation reflected huge strides by Israel’s Unit 8200 signals intelligence group in penetrating Hezbollah’s communications devices
  • The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel spent months planning how to use “a series of timed explosions” in the bunker beneath residential buildings where Nasrallah would be, “with each blast paving the way for the next one”

JERUSALEM: Israel’s killing of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in an air strike on Friday was a feat of spycraft capping days of operations highlighting its deep infiltration of the Iran-backed group.
Here’s what we know about how Israel marshalled its intelligence resources to pull off the attack:

Hezbollah began firing into northern Israel the day after its ally Hamas staged the brutal October 7 attack on southern Israel, triggering the ongoing war in Gaza.
Israel’s relatively low-level campaign against Hezbollah escalated dramatically on September 17 with sabotage attacks on pagers used by Hezbollah, followed the next day by explosions targeting the group’s two-way radios.
Exploding devices, which Israel has not claimed, killed at least 39 people, wounded almost 3,000 and “threw Hezbollah’s communications back to the stone-age,” wrote Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Analysts said the operation reflected huge strides by Israel’s Unit 8200 signals intelligence group in penetrating Hezbollah’s communications devices.
In February Nasrallah himself warned that “the cell phone that you hold in your hand is a spying device,” prompting use of the pagers that were later weaponized.
Yet military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told journalists the intelligence-gathering that led to Friday’s Beirut strike on Nasrallah went back years.
“We had used the intelligence we’ve been working for years to gather, and we had real-time information, and we carried out this strike,” he said.
Retired Col. Miri Eisen, a senior fellow at Israel’s International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University, also said the strike was the product of extensive work.
“Israel’s capabilities when it comes to Hezbollah show the depth of the intelligence infiltration into Hezbollah lines,” she said, adding these were “not things that were invented in the last 11 months” after Hezbollah began striking the north.

Israeli officials have said Nasrallah and other Hezbollah leaders gathered on Friday for a meeting at the group’s “central headquarters” in its main stronghold, located in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Warplanes had been pounding the area extensively as Israel ramped up operations against Hezbollah.
A military video showed F15 jets taking off from Hatzerim Airbase on Friday to carry out the operation.
Just before 6:30 p.m. (1530 GMT) the sound of powerful explosions was heard across the Lebanese capital.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel spent months planning how to use “a series of timed explosions” in the bunker beneath residential buildings where Nasrallah would be, “with each blast paving the way for the next one.”
But the paper also cited Israeli officials as saying the strike’s timing “was opportunistic, coming after Israeli intelligence learned about the meeting hours before it occurred.”
It coincided with the UN General Assembly, meaning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was out of the country at the time.
His office would later publish a photograph it said showed him approving the strike, which The Times of Israel said was apparently taken “at his hotel in New York.”
Israel has not specified the weaponry used in the strike.
However, the New York Times said analysis of a military video indicates the aircraft used had been “fitted with at least 15 2,000-pound bombs.”
Senior officials told the paper that “more than 80 bombs were dropped over a period of several minutes to kill” Nasrallah. The Wall Street Journal said Israel hit the bunker with “80 tons of bombs.”

The air strikes left craters up to five meters (16 feet) across, AFP photographers said.
Lebanon’s health ministry gave a preliminary toll of six dead and 91 wounded in the raid.
Middle East expert James Dorsey said there was no question that the strike represented a “very sophisticated” intelligence coup.
“It demonstrates not only significant technological capacity but just how deeply Israel has penetrated Hezbollah,” he said.
Heiko Wimmen of International Crisis Group said the long-term effects on Hezbollah’s operations were unclear.
“While Hezbollah is too well-institutionalized to collapse by decapitation, the staggering loss of its human resources will inevitably have a degrading effect sooner rather than later,” said Wimmen, the think tank’s project director for Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
“Their extensive intelligence infiltration also makes it doubtful that they can launch a strategic response or keep up the rocket attacks on northern Israel for much longer.”
For now, Israeli officials are celebrating Nasrallah’s death while weighing whether to press on with ground operations intended to tackle the threat posed by Hezbollah along the northern border.
The military on Saturday distributed a transcript quoting the commander of the squadron that struck Nasrallah as saying “We will reach everyone, everywhere.”

 


Head of UN-backed team of experts cites RSF paramilitaries in Sudan for sexual violence as war rages

Updated 8 sec ago
Follow

Head of UN-backed team of experts cites RSF paramilitaries in Sudan for sexual violence as war rages

Head of UN-backed team of experts cites RSF paramilitaries in Sudan for sexual violence as war rages

GENEVA: The head of a UN-backed fact-finding team looking into human rights violations and abuses in Sudan said Friday it found the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces responsible for large-scale sexual violence in areas that it controls.
Mohamed Chande Othman has denounced “staggering violence” in Sudan since war broke out more than 18 months ago between the Sudanese military and the RSF, starting with open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, that later spread across the country.
“We said in our report that we attribute sexual gender-based violence to RSF in West Darfur, in Darfur, in greater Khartoum, and in Al-Gezira (state),” the Tanzanian lawyer said Friday by phone from Zimbabwe, where he was attending a conference.
However, Othman said a renewed mandate from the UN Human Rights Council would allow his team of independent experts to investigate “credible” allegations of sexual exploitation by the Sudanese armed forces as well.
Sudan plunged into conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital Khartoum and spread to other regions including western Darfur. The war has killed more than 24,000 people so far, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a group monitoring the conflict since it started.

Infographic courtesy of UN International Migration Office

The fact-finding mission on Tuesday released a more comprehensive version of its report presented in September to the rights council, which has 47 member countries. The broader report cited gang rapes, sexual slavery and the abduction of victims in areas the RSF controls.
“It’s important to highlight the horrendous nature and the widespread nature — the patterns of violence — that were committed,” Othman said.
His team found the sexual violence and allegations of enforced marriages and human trafficking across borders for sexual purposes took place mostly during invasions of towns and cities.
“Victims and witnesses consistently reported that perpetrators threatened them with weapons, including firearms, knives and whips to intimidate and coerce them,” the latest report said, citing violence like punching, beatings with sticks, and lashing before and during rape.
“Men and boys were also reportedly targeted while in detention with sexual violence, including rape, threats of rape, forced nudity and beating on the genitals, requiring further investigation,” it added.
The violence in Sudan has been unrelenting. On Sunday, a doctors group and the United Nations reported that RSF fighters in east central Sudan’s Jazirah state carried out a multi-day attack that killed more than 120 people in one town.
On Tuesday, the UN migration agency said 14 million people — or over 30 percent of the country’s population — have been displaced either within Sudan or abroad because of the conflict, making it the world’s largest displacement crisis.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly condemned the RSF attacks in Jazirah and the appalling reports of a large number of killings, detentions and acts of sexual violence against women and girls as well as the looting of homes and markets, and the burning of farms, his spokesman said.
“Such acts may constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. “Perpetrators of such serious violations must be held accountable.”
The UN chief reiterated his call for a ceasefire, expressed alarm at the worsening humanitarian situation in Sudan and demanded that all parties facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid, Dujarric said.


UN chief condemns Sudan’s RSF, Britain to push for Security Council action

Updated 12 min 47 sec ago
Follow

UN chief condemns Sudan’s RSF, Britain to push for Security Council action

  • The current war has produced waves of ethnically driven violence blamed largely on RSF paramilitaries
  • Activists accused the RSF of killing at least 124 people in a village in El Gezira State last month

UNITED NATIONS: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned on Friday reported attacks on civilians by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces as Britain said it would push for a UN Security Council resolution on the more than 18-month long conflict.
War erupted in mid-April 2023 from a power struggle between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces ahead of a planned transition to civilian rule, and triggered the world’s largest displacement crisis.
The current war has produced waves of ethnically driven violence blamed largely on the RSF. The RSF has allegedly killed at least 124 people in a village in El Gezira State last month, activists said, in one of the conflict’s deadliest incidents.
The RSF has accused the army of arming civilians in Gezira. The RSF has previously denied harming civilians in Sudan and attributed the activity to rogue actors.
Guterres was appalled by “reports of large numbers of civilians being killed, detained and displaced, acts of sexual violence against women and girls, the looting of homes and markets and the burning of farms,” said a UN spokesperson.
“Such acts may constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law. Perpetrators of such serious violations must be held accountable,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.

Sudanese people fleeing the Jazirah district arrive at a camp for the displaced in the eastern city of Gedaref on October 31, 2024. (AFP)

ritain, which assumed the presidency on Friday of the Security Council for November, said the 15-member body would meet on Sudan on Nov. 12 to discuss “scaling up aid delivery and ensuring greater protection of civilians by all sides.”
“We will be shortly introducing a draft Security Council resolution ... to drive forward progress on this,” Britain’s UN Ambassador Barbara Woodward told a press conference.
She said the draft would focus on “developing a compliance mechanism for the warring parties commitments they made on the protection of civilians in Jeddah over a year ago in 2023 and ways to support mediation efforts to deliver a ceasefire, even if we start local ceasefires before moving to a national one.”
A resolution needs at least 9 votes in favor and no vetoes by the US, France, Britain, Russia or China to be adopted.
The move comes as a three-month approval given by Sudanese authorities for the UN and aid groups to use the Adre border crossing with Chad to reach Darfur with humanitarian assistance is due to expire in mid-November.
The Sudanese army-backed government is committed to facilitate aid deliveries across the country, including in areas controlled by the RSF, Sudan’s UN Ambassador Al-Harith Idriss Al-Harith Mohamed said on Monday.
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said on Monday that it was up to the Sudanese government to decide on whether the Adre crossing would remain open beyond mid-November and that it would be “inappropriate to put pressure on” the government.
“We’re categorically opposed to the politicization of humanitarian assistance,” he said. “We believe that any humanitarian assistance should be conducted and delivered solely with the central authorities in the loop.”

The UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs said more than 119,000 people had fled from the recent surge of violence in El Gezira state. The Rapid Support Forces launched their latest attacks there after a high-ranking officer from the area switched sides to the army.

War has raged in Sudan since April 2023 between the army under Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and paramilitary forces led by his former deputy Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.
The conflict has killed up to 150,000 people, displaced nearly eight million and caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. More than half the population face acute hunger.


Israel is falling far short of a US ultimatum to surge aid to Gaza

Updated 02 November 2024
Follow

Israel is falling far short of a US ultimatum to surge aid to Gaza

  • In a letter earlier, US officials demanded that Israel allow in a minimum of 350 trucks a day carrying desperately needed food and other supplies
  • By the end of October, an average of just 71 trucks a day were entering Gaza, according to the latest UN figures

WASHINGTON: Halfway through the Biden administration’s 30-day ultimatum for Israel to surge the level of humanitarian assistance allowed into Gaza or risk possible restrictions on US military funding, Israel is falling far short, an Associated Press review of UN and Israeli data shows.
Israel also has missed some other deadlines and demands outlined in a Oct. 13 letter from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. The mid-November deadline — following the US election — may serve as a final test of President Joe Biden ‘s willingness to check a close ally that has shrugged off repeated US appeals to protect Palestinian civilians during the war against Hamas.
In their letter, Blinken and Austin demanded improvements to the deteriorating humanitarian condition in Gaza, saying that Israel must allow in a minimum of 350 trucks a day carrying desperately needed food and other supplies. By the end of October, an average of just 71 trucks a day were entering Gaza, according to the latest UN figures.
Blinken said the State Department and Pentagon were closely following Israel’s response to the letter, including speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s top aide on Friday.
“There’s been progress, but it’s insufficient, and we’re working on a daily basis to make sure Israel does what it must do to ensure that this assistance gets to people who need it inside of Gaza,” Blinken told reporters Thursday.
“It’s not enough to get trucks to Gaza. It’s vital that what they bring with them can get distributed effectively inside of Gaza,” he added.
Blinken and Austin’s letter marked one of the toughest stands the Biden administration has taken in a year of appeals and warnings to Israel to lessen the harm to Palestinian civilians.
Support for Israel is a bedrock issue for many Republican voters and some Democrats. That makes any Biden administration decision on restricting military funding a fraught one for the tight presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
In hard-hit north Gaza in particular, an escalated Israeli military campaign and restrictions on aid have kept all food and other care from reaching populated areas since mid-October, aid organizations say. It could set the stage for famine in coming weeks or months, international monitors say.
Leaders of 15 UN and humanitarian groups, including the World Food Program and World Health Organization, warned Friday that “the situation unfolding in north Gaza is apocalyptic.”
And despite US objections, Israeli lawmakers this week voted effectively to ban the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA. Governments worldwide, the UN and aid organizations say cutting off UNRWA would shatter the aid networks struggling to get food and other supplies to people in Gaza.
“Catastrophic,” Amber Alayyan, a medical program manager for Gaza at Doctors Without Borders, said of the move.
Humanitarian officials are deeply skeptical Israel will significantly improve assistance to Gaza’s civilians even with the US warning — or that the Biden administration will do anything if it doesn’t.
At this point in the war, “neither of those has happened,” said Scott Paul, an associate director of the Oxfam humanitarian organization.
“Over and over and again, we’ve been told” by Biden administration officials “that there are processes to evaluate the situation on the ground” in Gaza “and some movement’s been made to implement US law, and time and again that has not happened,” Paul said.
Before the war, an average of 500 trucks daily brought aid into the territory. Relief groups have said that’s the minimum needed for Gaza’s 2.3 million people, most of whom have since been uprooted from their homes, often multiple times.
There has never been a month where Israel came close to meeting that figure since the conflict began, peaking in April at 225 trucks a day, according to Israeli government figures.
By the time Blinken and Austin sent their letter this month, concerns were rising that aid restrictions were starving civilians. The number of aid trucks that Israel has allowed into Gaza has plunged since last spring and summer, falling to a daily average of just 13 a day by the beginning of October, according to UN figures.
By the end of the month, it rose to an average of 71 trucks a day, the UN figures show.
Once supplies get to Gaza, groups still face obstacles distributing the aid to warehouses and then to people in need, organizations and the State Department said this week. That includes slow Israeli processing, Israeli restrictions on shipments, lawlessness and other obstacles, aid groups said.
Data from COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza, shows aid has fallen to under a third of its levels in September and August. In September, 87,446 tons of aid entered the Gaza Strip. In October, 26,399 tons got in.
Elad Goren, a senior COGAT official, said last week that aid delivery and distribution in the north have been mainly confined to Gaza City.
When asked why aid was not being delivered to other parts of the north — like Jabaliya, a crowded urban refugee camp where Israel is staging an offensive — he said the population there was being evacuated and those who remained had “enough assistance” from previous months.
In other areas like Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, Goren claimed falsely there was “no population” left.
COGAT declined to comment on the standard in the US letter. It said it was complying with government directives on aid to Gaza. Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon blamed Hamas for plundering aid.
Paul of Oxfam said no aid at all was reaching populated areas in northern Gaza and only small amounts were getting to Gaza City.
“No way” has Israel made progress in getting humanitarian support to the hundreds of thousands of people in north Gaza in particular since the US ultimatum, said Alayyan of Doctors Without Borders.
Israel’s government appeared to blow past another deadline set in Austin and Blinken’s letter. It called for Israel to set up a senior-level channel for US officials to raise concerns about reported harm to Palestinian civilians and hold a first meeting by the end of October.
No such channel — requested repeatedly by the US during the war — had been created by the final day of the month.
The US is by far the biggest provider of arms and other military aid to Israel, including nearly $18 billion during the war in Gaza, according to a study for Brown University’s Costs of War project.
The Biden administration paused a planned shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel last spring, citing concerns for civilians in an Israeli offensive.
In a formal review in May, the administration concluded that Israel’s use of US-provided weapons in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law but said wartime conditions prevented officials from determining that for certain in specific strikes.
 


Iraq’s parliament elects a new speaker to end a nearly yearlong vacuum

Updated 01 November 2024
Follow

Iraq’s parliament elects a new speaker to end a nearly yearlong vacuum

BAGHDAD: Iraq’s parliament has elected a new speaker after a nearly yearlong vacuum.
Mahmoud Al-Mashhadani, who served a previous stint as speaker from 2006 to 2009, was elected by 182 of the 269 legislators who attended the session, a surprise move after months of deadlock between political factions.
Former Speaker Mohammed Al-Halbousi was dismissed by a Federal Supreme Court last November against the backdrop of a lawsuit filed by then-lawmaker Laith Al-Dulaimi.
Al-Dulaim claimed that the speaker had forged Al-Dulaimi’s signature on a resignation letter, an allegation Al-Halbousi denied.
The court ruled to terminate both Al-Halbousi and Al-Dulaimi from their parliamentary posts.
It did not elaborate on why it was issuing the decision.
The speaker is an intermediary between the various political blocs and will be critical to the government’s efforts to achieve economic reforms and reduce internal tensions.
The election of a new parliament speaker comes at a time when Iraq is facing significant challenges — chief among them attempting to navigate the repercussions of the wars in the Middle East.
Iraq’s government has sought to avoid alienating the US, upon which it has relied for economic and military support, including in the fight against Daesh.
The country also faces rampant corruption and internal divisions.
The new speaker will have to deal with some controversial legislation, notably a proposed amendment to Iraq’s personal status law governing family matters, which critics say would effectively legalize child marriage.


WATCH: Rebuilding of Mosul’s famous leaning minaret nears completion

Updated 01 November 2024
Follow

WATCH: Rebuilding of Mosul’s famous leaning minaret nears completion

  • The 12th-century Al-Nuri Mosque and its distinctive tower were destroyed by Daesh in June 2017
  • Restoration work on the mosque, part of UNESCO’s Revive the Spirit of Mosul project, is expected to be completed next month

LONDON: UNESCO has shared dramatic footage of a historic mosque minaret that has been rebuilt in Iraq, seven years after it was destroyed by Daesh.

Known as Al-Hadba, or “the hunchback,” the leaning 12th-Century minaret at Al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul was one of the city’s most famous landmarks. But it was destroyed when the extremist group blew up the mosque in June 2017.

The video from the UN’s cultural agency features drone footage that shows the minaret nearing completion. Though the rebuilt tower is still covered in scaffolding, the footage clearly shows that its famous lean has been retained.

“Watch as the iconic Al-Hadba minaret in Mosul rises once again,” UNESCO said in a message posted with the video on social media platform X.

“Soon, this historic landmark will reclaim its rightful place in the city’s skyline — standing tall, leaning, and proud.”

UNESCO said the restoration of the mosque and its 51-meter-tall minaret is expected to be completed by December.

The mosque was built in the second half of the 12th century and the minaret began to lean several centuries ago. After Daesh seized control of parts of Iraq in 2014, the group’s leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, declared the establishment of its so-called caliphate from inside the mosque.

Three years later, it was destroyed by the militants as Iraqi forces battled to expel them from the city. Thousands of civilians were killed in the fighting and much of Mosul was left in ruins.

The restoration of the mosque is part of UNESCO’s Revive the Spirit of Mosul project, which also includes the rebuilding of two churches and other historic sites.