24 September 2024

Hezbollah pager attack puts spotlight on Israel's cyber warfare Unit 8200

Jonathan Saul, Steven Scheer and Ari Rabinovitch

The mass pager attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon has turned the spotlight on Israel's secretive Unit 8200, the Israel Defense Forces' intelligence unit, which a Western security source said was involved in planning the operation.

Israeli officials have remained silent on the audacious intelligence operation that killed 12 people on Tuesday and wounded thousands of Hezbollah operatives. At least one person was killed on Wednesday when hand-held radios used by Hezbollah detonated.

A senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters that Israel's Mossad spy agency was responsible for a sophisticated operation to plant a small quantity of explosives inside 5,000 pagers ordered by Hezbollah.

One Western security source told Reuters that Unit 8200, a military unit that is not part of the spy agency, was involved in the development stage of the operation against Hezbollah which was over a year in the making.

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