Lebanon files UN complaint against Israel over Hezbollah pager blasts

Lebanon says it has filed a complaint with the United Nations’ labor agency over deadly attacks on communication devices held by Hezbollah operatives across the country in September, which it blames on Israel.

Lebanese Labor Minister Mustafa Bayram claims the attack was an “egregious war against humanity, against technology, against work,” saying his country has filed the complaint with the International Labour Organization in Geneva.

“It’s a very dangerous precedent,” he tells journalists in the Swiss city at an event organized by the UN correspondents’ association ACANU.

In September, before Israel launched a ground operation in Lebanon following a year of non-stop cross-border attacks by the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah exploded, killing dozens of people and injuring thousands more across Lebanon, in what has widely been reported as a successful Mossad operation.

Israel has not officially taken responsibility for the attacks, but Bayram says it is “widely accepted internationally… that Israel was behind this heinous act.”

“In a few minutes, more than 4,000 civilians fell, between martyrs and injured and maimed,” he says, speaking through a translator, while avoiding mentioning that the attack was directed against terror operatives, not civilians.

Among the victims not killed, he says many people “lost their fingers; some have totally lost their eyesight.”

“We are in a situation where ordinary objects, objects you use in daily life, become dangerous and lethal,” he claims.

“If left unchecked, this crime could become normalized,” he says, adding that filing the complaint is meant “to prevent such crimes from happening in the future.”