GENEVA: Lebanon said on Wednesday (Nov 6) that it had filed a complaint with the United Nations’ labour agency over deadly attacks on communication devices across the country in September, which it blames on Israel.
Lebanese Labour Minister Mustafa Bayram called the attack an “egregious war against humanity, against technology, against work”, saying his country had filed the complaint with the International Labour Organization in Geneva.
“It’s a very dangerous precedent,” he told journalists in the Swiss city at an event organised by the UN correspondents’ association ACANU.
The move comes after Israel escalated its air raids on Hezbollah strongholds in south Lebanon, Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley on Sep 23, after nearly a year of cross-border fire, and a week later sent ground troops into southern Lebanon.
The escalation kicked off with sabotage attacks on pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah, which killed dozens of people and injured thousands more across Lebanon.
Israel has not officially taken responsibility for those 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, speaking through a translator.
Among the victims not killed, he said many people had “lost their fingers; some have totally lost their eyesight”.
“We are in a situation where ordinary objects, objects you use in daily life, become dangerous and lethal,” he said.
“If left unchecked, this crime could become normalised,” he said, adding that filing the complaint was meant “to prevent such crimes from happening in the future”.
“I consider it a moral obligation to my country and to the world.”
