Hassan Nasrallah: How Israel tracked down and killed Hezbollah leader in his bombed Beirut bunker

According to the American newspaper “The New York Times”, the Unit 8200which belongs to the Intelligence Directorate of the Israel Defense Forces (FDI), was in charge of building and improving any type of tool that served to intercept communications through the Internet or mobile phones. Hezbollah.

The Unit 8200 ended up penetrating the entire infrastructure of the organization, which helped Israel to carry out an elaborate mapping of their leaders. It also developed advanced cyber tools to intercept Hezbollah’s communications and monitor its movements. In addition, Israel improved image capture through satellites and drones.

Deployed drones and satellites over Lebanon allowing him to document even the most subtle changes to the group’s infrastructure, such as the construction of new weapons warehouses or the displacement of forces towards the south of the country, the NYT noted.

Hezbollah had been involved in the war in Gaza practically from the beginning. On October 8, 2023, he began firing rockets against northern Israel in support of the Palestinians. Hamas.

On September 17, a sabotage operation attributed to Israel exploded thousands of beepers used by Hezbollah. The next day, the walkie-talkies of the group. 39 people died and more than 3,000 were injured, many of them with mutilated hands and serious facial injuries.

Hezbollah used low-tech devices by order of Nasrallahwho had warned in February that The mobile phone was actually a spy device.

According to “The New York Times,” the Mossad established a front company in Budapest (Hungary) and manufactured modified beepers with explosives under a license obtained in Taiwan, which were then introduced into the Lebanon and distributed within Hezbollah’s communications network.

What has been seen in recent years is the result of a complex intelligence work that has been going on since the end of the war in 2006 who faced Israel con Hezbollahwrote Israeli journalist Ron Ben-Yishai on the Ynet portal.

Ben-Yishai assured that the precise information that fed the airplane computers and the ammunition used was obtained by the Unit 8200which is responsible for listening and obtaining intelligence through cybernetic and electronic means. This was added to the information obtained by the Unit 9900which collects visual intelligence and knows how to determine precise target coordinates.

United States bunker buster bombs

The penetration of intelligence into the circle of power Hezbollah It was so deep that Israel I knew that Nasrallah and other members of the leadership would meet on Friday, September 27 in a supposedly secret place and an order could be given to bomb them.

The Israeli operation that involved the beeper of Hezbollah would have pushed Nasrallah to have the need to meet in person with other members of the leadership.

According to unconfirmed information from the French newspaper Le Parisien, The spy who informed the Israelis that Nasrallah was heading to the bunker was Iranian. At this point, it must be taken into account that Iran is the main sponsor of Hezbollah.

The Wall Street Journal, based on Israeli authorities, said that Israeli intelligence learned of the meeting hours before it took place.

According to the British newspaper “The Guardian”, for some time Israel I had my eye on the headquarters of Hezbollahlocated beneath a complex of apartment buildings in southern Beirut.

The commander of the 69th F-15I Squadron that carried out the attack, identified in Israeli media as Lt. Col. M, said that The crews involved had been preparing for “several days”although they were only informed of the planned objective a few hours before. F-15I aircraft were armed to attack and destroy undergroundwhich required a large amount of explosives, also capable of eliminating the buildings that were on top, indicated “The Guardian.”

Israel published a video showing the fighter planes taking off from the air base of Hatzerim. In the images eight are identified F-15I manufactured in USA. An aviation expert, Justin Bronkmaintained that guided direct attack missiles equipped with penetrating fuzes that explode after impacting buildings or the ground were probably used. According to the Israeli air force, bombs were dropped “every second”, completely destroying three residential buildings and seriously damaging two others.

Experts consulted by “The Guardian” said they appeared to be American-made 2,000-pound (907 kilo) BLU-109 bombsthe kind that the president’s administration Joe Biden had decided to retain Israel a few months ago amid concerns about its use against civilian targets in densely populated Gaza.

Initial estimates on the ground suggested that 300 people may have died, although Lebanon’s official count was 11 dead, including Nasrallahand 108 injured. Israel said it had killed more than 20 members of Hezbollah.

In 2006 Israel failed to kill Nasrallah

Israeli military spokesman Nadav Shoshani confirmed to the press on Friday that the intelligence gathering that led to the murder of Nasrrallah dates back several years.

“We used intelligence that we had collected for years, we had information in real time and we carried out this attack”, he said.

During the 2006 war, Israel tried to kill Nasrallah thrice. “What has changed, current and former officials said, is the depth and quality of intelligence that Israel has been able to rely on in the past two months.starting with the murder on July 30, Fuad Shukrone of the right hands of Nasrallahwhen he was visiting a friend not far from the site of Friday’s attack,” noted the English newspaper Financial Times.

“For two decades, Israel’s sophisticated Intelligence Unit 8200 and its military intelligence directorate, called Aman, mined enormous amounts of data to map the rapidly growing militia of Israel’s ‘northern arena,'” he added.

Journalist Ron Ben-Yishai maintained in his Ynet article that his Defense sources told him that the Mossad studied the strengths and weaknesses of Hezbollah and then planned and began carrying out a series of intelligence operations on the ground, which are reflected in what is happening now.

“It was not ‘golden knowledge’ that allowed the murder of Nasrallahbut the intelligence infrastructure that allowed the chief of staff, the defense minister and the prime minister to decide that they wanted to assassinate Nasrallah last week, and they knew that the intelligence community and the infrastructure prepared by the Mossad They would give them the time, place and time they wanted,” Ben-Yishai said.

The success of the strategy Israel to eliminate the Nasrallah almost the entire dome of Hezbollah It contrasts with the failure attributed to the intelligence services for not having been able to detect in time the Hamas operation of October 7, when it entered Israeli territory and killed more than 1,200 people and kidnapped about 250.