Pager attacks on Hezbollah a masterstroke, says Indian Army chief
Hezbollah, which has deep ties with Hamas, had ordered more than 5,000 pagers months before the attack.
Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi on Tuesday described the setting up of a shell company by Israel to supply pagers that targeted Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon in September as a “masterstroke” by the Israelis.
“If you talk about the pagers, it is a Taiwan company, supplying to a Hungarian company and thereafter giving it to them (Hezbollah operatives). The shell company which has been created is something which is a masterstroke by Israelis. And for that, it requires years and years of preparation. War does not start the day you start fighting, it starts the day you start planning,” the army chief said.
The comments came a fortnight after thousands of pagers exploded simultaneously across Lebanon, with the sophisticated and unprecedented attack killing scores of people and leaving thousands wounded. Dwivedi was speaking at the Chanakya Defence Dialogue 2024, organised by the Indian Army in collaboration with the think tank Centre for Land Warfare Studies.
Speaking in the Indian context, the army chief said, “Coming on to our side, supply chain interruption and interception is something we must be watchful about. We must have various levels of inspection...whether it is at the technological level as well as the manual level to make sure such things do not get repeated in our case.”
Israel is believed to have carried out the deadly attack by concealing explosives inside the pager batteries. Hezbollah, which has deep ties with Hamas, had ordered more than 5,000 pagers months before the attack.
“There’s an Israeli saying that mow the grass so that for some time thereafter at least there is rest. It will come up again and we will take care of it. And that’s what they have been doing. But this time they have done something different,” Dwivedi said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday reiterated India’s opposition to terrorism and simultaneously urged his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu to prevent regional escalation, saying New Delhi will support early restoration of peace in West Asia.
The interaction came days after an Israeli air strike in Lebanon killed senior Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, triggering fears about an escalation of the conflict in Gaza.
India had initially expressed solidarity with Israel after the October 7 Hamas terror attacks but subsequently adopted a more nuanced position given its growing strategic ties with several Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
