Hassan Nasrallah: Israel has crossed all red lines. Lebanon is at war

Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, called the explosions of pagers and other electronic devices in Lebanon a terrorist attack. The attacks lead to a declaration of war, the official added. Israel has crossed all red lines as 5,000 people could have died in one or two minutes.

Photo: flickr.com by Zachi Evenor, CC BY 4.0

"On Tuesday, Israel intended to kill 4,000 people in one minute by exploding pagers. Many of them were civilians. The next day, another 1,000 in one minute. In two minutes, Israel intended to kill 5,000. We were hit hard. This is a war, this is a conflict. We know that the enemy, not only Israel, but also the United States and NATO, has technological superiority."

The Israeli side has not confirmed involvement in the explosions of pagers and other devices in Lebanon.

Nasrallah called the recent explosions in Lebanon a war crime, a large-scale terrorist attack and genocide that leads to a declaration of war. Lebanon experienced the largest attack in history, he added.

The Hezbollah leader promised that Israel will be justly punished for September 17 and 18 terrorist attacks on Lebanon.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military struck Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon to undermine terrorist capabilities and infrastructure of the organisation, IDF said.

Details

 
Hassan Nasrallah is a Lebanese cleric and the secretary-general of Hezbollah, a Shia Islamist political party and militant group. Born into a Shia family in the suburbs of Beirut in 1960, Nasrallah finished his education in Tyre, when he briefly joined the Amal Movement, and afterwards at a Shia seminary in Baalbek. He later studied and taught at an Amal school. Nasrallah joined Hezbollah, which was formed to fight the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. After a brief period of religious studies in Iran, Nasrallah returned to Lebanon and became Hezbollah's leader after his predecessor was assassinated by an Israeli airstrike in 1992. Under Nasrallah's leadership, Hezbollah acquired rockets with a longer range, which allowed them to strike at northern Israel. After Israel suffered heavy casualties during its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, it withdrew its forces in 2000, which greatly increased Hezbollah's popularity in the region, and bolstered Hezbollah's position within Lebanon. However, Hezbollah's role in ambushing an Israeli border patrol unit leading up to the 2006 Lebanon War, was subject to local and regional criticism. During the Syrian civil war, Hezbollah fought on the side of the Syrian army against what Nasrallah termed "Islamist extremists".