Mass pager attacks ‘a terrifying violation of international law’

The detonation of thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, believed to have been carried out by Israel, could constitute a war crime, according to a group of more than a dozen United Nations legal experts.

The experts, led by University of Sydney law professor Ben Saul, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, labelled the exploding pagers “a terrifying violation of international law”.

First responders carry a man wounded after his handheld pager exploded, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon.Credit: AP

“These attacks violate the human right to life, absent any indication that the victims posed an imminent lethal threat to anyone else at the time,” the experts said in a joint statement issued from Geneva late on Thursday night.

“Such attacks require prompt, independent investigation to establish the truth and enable accountability for the crime of murder.”

Two days of back-to-back mass simultaneous explosions in Lebanon – beginning with rudimentary pagers bought by Hezbollah to circumvent Israeli surveillance and followed by walkie-talkie devices used by members of the militant group – had led to 32 deaths and at least 3450 injuries, Lebanon’s health ministry said.

Two children, including a nine-year-old girl, died in the attacks, according to the Associated Press.

The Iranian ambassador to Lebanon lost one eye and sustained severe injuries in the other in the mass explosions in Beirut, The New York Times has reported.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the attacks, but The Times and other outlets have reported multiple defence and intelligence officials saying they believed Israel was behind the explosions. Israel was not specifically named in the UN experts’ statement, which expressed their “deepest solidarity to the victims of the attacks”.

The group of UN experts – including the special rapporteurs on the right to development, education, housing and democracy – said: “Simultaneous attacks by thousands of devices would inevitably violate humanitarian law by failing to verify each target and to distinguish between protected civilians and those who could potentially be attacked for taking a direct part in hostilities.

“Such attacks could constitute war crimes of murder, attacking civilians, and launching indiscriminate attacks, in addition to violating the right to life.”

Saul said while the attacks were clearly aimed at Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets over the Lebanese border with Israel since Hamas launched its October 7 attacks, it was important to remember that the group was a social and political movement as well as a military one.

Hezbollah, a listed terrorist organisation in Australia, won 20 per cent of the vote in the most recent Lebanese elections, claiming 15 parliamentary seats in 2022.

Being a Hezbollah accountant, for example, should not make someone a target for assassination, Saul said.

“The crux of the problem is it is absolutely impossible to know who would be in possession of so many pagers at the time they were detonated,” Saul said, adding they could easily have been passed on to family members.

“Launching indiscriminate attacks is a war crime under international law.”

The experts added that international humanitarian law prohibited the use of booby traps, a category that could include modified civilian pagers.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-executive chair Alex Ryvchin said Hezbollah had launched repeated rocket attacks across Israel’s northern border, forcing tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate their homes for almost a year.

“Israel has every right to target the operatives of a terrorist organisation and doing so by detonating personal devices that only Hezbollah members are issued is ingenious and clearly intended to strike terrorists, not civilians,” he said.

“The more Hezbollah is degraded, the greater the prospects for regional peace.”

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.