Tel Aviv

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the first time during Sunday's weekly cabinet meeting, admitted that Israel was behind the attacks on Hezbollah's pager and walkie-talkies, which killed at least 39 people and wounded over 3,000, as reported by The Times of Israel.

The attacks, carried out on September 17 and 18, targeted thousands of handheld pagers and hundreds of walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members across Lebanon and Syria.

"The pager operation and the elimination of [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah were carried out despite the opposition of senior officials in the defence establishment and those responsible for them in the political echelon," Netanyahu reportedly said, in a not-very-oblique dig at IDF and intelligence chiefs, as well as his recently fired defence minister, Yoav Gallant.

Last week, Netanyahu dismissed defence minister Yoav Gallant, citing a lack of trust, and replaced him with Israel Katz, who was previously serving as foreign minister. Netanyahu and Gallant had clashed multiple times during their time in government, The Times of Israel reported.

Earlier, Israel had not publicly claimed responsibility for the attacks that targeted Hezbollah, which saw pagers and walkie-talkies explode in two waves on September 17 and 18, resulting in at least 39 deaths.

The Times of Israel reported that Lebanon said nearly 3,000 others were wounded in the attack. The tolls did not differentiate between civilians and members of the terror group, and among the wounded was Tehran's ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani.

In the aftermath, various media outlets reported that the attack was a highly sophisticated Israeli intelligence operation years in the making in which Hezbollah was fooled into purchasing the compromised devices.

The explosions were followed up by a series of Israeli airstrikes that took out much of Hezbollah's command structure, including Nasrallah, and an ongoing limited ground operation in southern Lebanon to eliminate the immediate threats posed by the terror group to Israel's northern border communities.

Earlier, Lebanese health ministry announced that the country's death toll in the Israel-Hezbollah war had crossed 3,000. The figure does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

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The IDF had estimated that some 3,000 Hezbollah operatives had been killed in the conflict. Around 100 members of other terror groups had also been reported killed in Lebanon.