Lebanon announced on Wednesday that it had filed a complaint with the UN over the deadly explosions of pagers and talkies-walkies Lebanese Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah trapped across the country in September, which it attributes to Israel.
Describing this attack as “a blatant war against humanity, against technology, against work”, the interim Minister of Labor, Mustapha Bayram, who belongs to the Hezbollah bloc, indicated during a press conference in Geneva that his country had filed a complaint with the International Labor Organization (ILO), a specialized UN agency.
“This is a very dangerous precedent,” he added to the correspondents of the Association of Journalists Accredited to the UN (ACANU) who organized the event.
Receive our daily edition for free by email so you don’t miss the best news. Free registration!
The move comes after Israel intensified its air raids on Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon, Beirut and the Bekaa plain since September 23, after nearly a year of cross-border fire.
The escalation began with attacks on beepers and talkies-walkies used by many members of Hezbollah and transformed into explosive devices.
Israel has not officially claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Bayram said it was “widely accepted internationally […] that Israel was behind this heinous act. »
“In a few minutes, more than 4,000 civilians fell, including martyrs, wounded and mutilated,” according to him, without mentioning the members of Hezbollah targeted in this meticulously surgical attack.
Among the victims who were not killed, many people “lost their fingers, some lost their sight completely”, he added, still without mentioning the pro-Iran terrorists.
“We are in a situation where ordinary objects, objects that you use in daily life, are becoming dangerous and deadly,” the minister said.
“If nothing is done, this crime could become normalized,” he assured, specifying that the filing of the complaint was intended “to prevent such crimes from happening again in the future.”
“I consider this to be a moral obligation towards my country and towards the world,” he insisted.
“Multitude of complaints”
Asked why Lebanon filed a complaint with the ILO, Bayram spoke of all the workers who were at their workplace when the beepers and talkies-walkies – tools they used in the course of their work – suddenly exploded. Thus, Bayram considers that Hezbollah terrorism is a job like any other.
“We found it necessary to highlight that this goes against the working environment, safety and security, and the principles of decent work upheld by the ILO,” he explained.
He added that Lebanese authorities could still file complaints about the pager attacks with other international bodies, including the World Trade Organization.
“More generally, the Lebanese government wants to file a multitude of complaints against Israel regarding its operations in the country, because “the number of crimes is enormous,” he assures.
More than 3,000 deaths have been reported in Lebanon since Hezbollah attacks began in October 2023, according to the Health Ministry, including at least 1,964 since September 23, according to an AFP tally.
Since October 8, 2023, Hezbollah has attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border daily with rockets, drones, anti-tank missiles and other means, claiming it is doing so to support Gaza as part of of the war against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas which is taking place there.
After coming under near-daily fire from Hezbollah – preventing more than 60,000 Israelis since evacuated from returning home, Israel launched a campaign of massive airstrikes on September 23 on Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon, and Since September 30, Israel has launched a ground operation in the south of the country, extended to the coastal areas of the southwest in order to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure that threatened communities near the border.
Hezbollah reported that 516 of its terrorists have been killed by Israel since October 8, mainly in Lebanon, but also in Syria.
Ninety-four other terrorists from other groups, a Lebanese soldier and dozens of civilians were also killed.
These figures have not been regularly updated since Israel launched a new operation against Hezbollah in September, but the IDF estimates that more than 2,000 Hezbollah terrorists have been killed in the conflict.
Faced with the escalation, the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group seems to have stopped naming its eliminated elements.
