GENEVA: Lebanon on Wednesday announced the filing of a complaint with the United Nations over the deadly pager attacks which killed at least 40 people and wounded over 3,000.
Lebanese group, Hezbollah blamed its arch-foe Israel, a key ally of the United States, for the pager explosions and vowed to punish Israel for the attack.
Labour Minister of Lebanon Mustafa Bayram has termed the attack an “egregious war against humanity, against technology, against work”. He added that his country had filed the complaint with the International Labour Organization in Geneva.
“It’s a very dangerous precedent,” he told journalists in Geneva.
The development comes after Israel intensified its air strikes on strongholds of Hezbollah in south Lebanon, Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley on September 23.
Israel has not officially claimed responsibility for the pager attacks, but Bayram said it was “widely accepted internationally… that Israel was behind this heinous act”.
“In a few minutes, more than 4,000 civilians fell, between martyrs and injured and maimed,” he said.
He noted many people had lost their body parts in the attacks and some had totally lost their eyesight.
“If left unchecked, this crime could become normalised,” he said. The minister said filing the complaint with the UN was meant to prevent such crimes in the future.
To a question, he said that Lebanon had opted to file the complaint with the ILO, as the workers were on the job using pagers and walkie-talkies when they suddenly exploded.
“We deemed it necessary to point out that this runs contrary to work environment, security and safety, contrary to decent work principles… defended by the ILO,” he said.
He said that Lebanese authorities could still approach other international forums, including the World Trade Organization over the attacks.
It is pertinent to mention that more than 3,000 people have been killed in Lebanon since clashes between Israel and Hezbollah started in October 2023.
Norwegian police said that Indian citizen Rinson Jose was allegedly involved in the pager explosions in Lebanon. BBC reported that the company owned by Indian citizens had allegedly supplied the pagers to Hezbollah, which killed 38 people and left more than 3000 injured in Lebanon.
Reports suggest the pagers, which had reportedly been modified by Israel to hide three grams of explosives in each device. However, Israel did not issue any comment on the matter.
