Israel hacked Lebanese phones during Sayyed Nasrallah speech

Lebanon's OGERO telecom authority will issue a statement on the issue, LBCI added.

Thousands of Lebanese citizens had received Thursday voice and text messages accusing Sayyed Nasrallah of ordering the assassination of Hezbollah military commander Mustafa Badreddine in Syria last year. The party says Badreddine was killed by “artillery bombardment carried out by takfiri groups” near Damascus airport.

An official statement issued by Hezbollah's media department said that during Sayyed Nasrallah's speech commemorating Badreddine on Thursday, “a manipulation of an unknown source affected the landlines of Hezbollah's Media Relations Department.”

“Several citizens received voice and text messages that appeared to be coming from these numbers,” the department said, noting that the messages “carried insults to the resistance and its leader.”

“Hezbollah's Media Relations Department is following up on the issue with the relevant officials in the Lebanese telecom ministry and the OGERO authority in order to unveil the manipulators and the methods that they used to achieve this penetration,” the dept. added.

Al-Akhbar newspaper said “tens of thousands” of Lebanese citizens received phone calls and text messages part of which appeared to be coming from Hezbollah's landlines.

U.S., Canadian, Sri Lankan and Thai numbers were also used in the operation, al-Akhbar added, noting that these numbers sent a “unified voice message” in addition to video messages via WhatsApp and Viber.

The newspaper also reminded that Israel had waged a similar campaign during the 2006 war with Hezbollah and that it has launched several similar campaigns in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

In March, Israeli army chief Gadi Eisenkot had openly declared that Badreddine “was killed by his own officers."



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