Mossad agents penetrated Nasrallah’s bunker before assassination – report

Heavy IAF bombing of a Beirut neighborhood both protected and endangered them as they carried out their mission.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Several Mossad agents penetrated the heavily fortified bunker of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, planting devices critical to the Sept. 27, 2024, assassination of him and other senior militants, Ynet reported Sunday.

Israel’s Intelligence Directorate knew exactly where and when Nasrallah planned to meet with the commander of Iran’s Quds Force in Lebanon, Brig. Gen. Abbas Nilforoushan, and senior staff including Hezbollah’s southern front commander, Ali Karki, who had been touted as a possible successor to Nasrallah and had been the target of a failed IDF assassination attempt four days earlier.

At some point before the meeting, the agents stealthily brought several heavily camouflaged devices to the site, accepting the risk of discovery and almost certain death.

The devices had been developed about a year before the war triggered by the Hamas invasion of Israel Oct. 7, 2023, mainly with the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program in mind, the report said.

Knowing much of Iran’s uranium enrichment was buried deep underground — and that Hezbollah’s leader also spent much of his life in bunkers — the Defense Ministry’s weapons development unit created technology to ensure the success of a major bombing attack.

Planted at the right depths, the devices guaranteed that 83 precision munitions Israeli bombers aimed at Nasrallah’s hideout under a civilian apartment building in Beirut’s Dahiyyeh neighborhood would hit their target, including adjacent tunnels built as escape routes.

The IAF had been bombing the neighborhood, a Hezbollah stronghold, following the Sept. 17 “beeper” operation in which thousands of terrorists were wounded when their booby-trapped pagers exploded, followed by their Mossad-tampered walkie-talkies detonating the next day.

The agents initially demanded that that the bombing cease on the night of their mission so that they could walk the streets without fearing being hit by their own side, the report said.

Their handler convinced them that it would be safer if the air force not only kept bombing but intensified its attacks.

This would force the terrorists to take cover, reducing the chance the agents would be stopped in the streets or inside the usually well-guarded building.

Still, the report said the men only “estimated their chances of returning safely from the mission at 50-50,” given Dahiyyeh’s status as a Hezbollah stronghold and the danger of flying shrapnel.

All the agents did return, and the stage was set for the 6:20 attack, when 10 F-15I’s and F-16I jets dropped their 83 tons of BLU-109 bunker-buster guided bombs accurately, killing everyone in the bunker as well as about 250 others, most of them Hezbollah personnel nearby.

The combined beeper attacks and assassinations heavily demoralized the terrorist organization, leading to a ceasefire after Israel had endured thousands of drone, missile and rocket strikes from Lebanon for almost a full year as Hezbollah aided Hamas in its war in Gaza.

BeirutHezbollah beepersIsrael-Hamas warMossad agentsNasrallah assassination