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22-09-2024
TEHRAN: Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Saturday that Israel is committing “shameless crimes” against children, not combatants.
His comments came a day after an Israeli airstrike on the Lebanese capital, Beirut, killed at least 31 people, including three children and seven women, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
Friday’s strike, which according to a source targeted a building next to a nursery, was the deadliest in a year of conflict between Israel and the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah militia.
It followed two days of attacks in which pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members exploded. Lebanon blamed the attacks on Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
Khamenei said Israel was not even hiding its different forms of “shameless crimes” in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria.
It is not combating “fighting men, but ordinary people,” Khamenei told a group of envoys from Muslim countries in Tehran in remarks broadcast on state TV.
“Unable to hurt the real fighters in Palestine, they are venting their malicious anger on small children, on hospital patients, and on schools filled with young children.”
Also on Saturday, in a show of strength, Iran unveiled its “Jihad” single-stage liquid-fuel ballistic missile with a high-explosive detachable warhead and a range of 1,000 km, according to state TV.
The missiles were displayed, along with other military hardware, during a parade marking the anniversary of the start of the 1980-88 war with Iraq.
Meanwhile, Bulgaria and Norway became new focal points on Thursday of a global hunt for who supplied Hezbollah with the thousands of pagers that exploded in Lebanon this week in a deadly blow to the militant group.
Security sources said that Israel was responsible for the explosions on Tuesday that killed 37 people, injured more than 2,300 and raised the stakes in a growing conflict between the two sides. Israel has not directly commented on the attacks.
How and with whose help the pager attack was carried out was not yet known, although so far there were possible leads in Taiwan, Hungary and Bulgaria.
It is not clear how and when the pagers were weaponized so they could be remotely detonated. The same question remains for the hundreds of hand-held radios used by Hezbollah that exploded on Wednesday in a second wave of attacks.
One theory is that the pagers were intercepted and hooked up with explosives after they left factories. Another is that Israel orchestrated the whole deadly supply chain.
Bulgarian authorities said on Thursday that its interior ministry and state security services had opened an investigation into a company’s possible ties. They did not name the company they were investigating.
Local media reports said Sofia-based Norta Global Ltd had facilitated the sale of the pagers to Hezbollah. Citing security sources, national broadcaster bTV reported, opens new tab that 1.6 million euros related to the transaction passed through Bulgaria, and was sent to Hungary.
Media could not immediately confirm the claim.
Emails sent to a Norta email listed on Bulgarian company registration records were returned as undeliverable. The firm’s founder declined to comment.
Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format consistent with devices made by Taiwan’s Gold Apollo. Gold Apollo said on Wednesday that the pagers were made by BAC Consulting, a company based in the Hungarian capital Budapest. (Int’l News Desk)
