Coded messages, landline phones, and pagers: following the killing of senior commanders in targeted Israeli airstrikes, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group, Hezbollah, has been using some low-tech strategies to try to evade its foe’s sophisticated surveillance technology, informed sources said.

The sides have been trading fire since Hezbollah’s Palestinian ally in the Gaza Strip, Hamas, attacked Israel in October last year, triggering the ongoing war. While the fighting on Lebanon’s southern border has remained relatively contained, stepped-up attacks in recent weeks have intensified concern that it could spiral into a full-scale war.

Tens of thousands of people have fled both sides of the border. Israeli strikes have killed more than 330 Hezbollah fighters and around 90 civilians in Lebanon.

Israel says attacks from Lebanon have killed 21 soldiers and 10 civilians.

As domestic pressure builds in Israel over Hezbollah’s barrages, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has highlighted its ability to hit the group’s operatives across the border.

Electronic surveillance technology plays a vital role in these strikes. The IDF has said it has security cameras and remote sensing systems trained on areas where Hezbollah operates, and it regularly sends surveillance drones over the border to spy on its adversary.

Israel’s electronic eavesdropping is also widely regarded as among the world’s most sophisticated.

Hezbollah has learned from its losses and adapted its tactics in response, six sources familiar with the group’s operations said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters.

Cell phones, which can be used to track a user’s location, have been banned from the battlefield in favour of more old-fashioned communication means, including pagers and couriers who deliver verbal messages in person, two of the sources said.

Hezbollah has also been using a private, fixed-line telecommunications network dating back to the early 2000s, three sources said.

Code words

In case conversations are overheard, code words are used for weapons and meeting sites, according to another source familiar with the group’s logistics. These are updated nearly daily and delivered to units via couriers, the source said. “We’re facing a battle in which information and technology are essential parts,” said Qassem Kassir, a Lebanese analyst close to Hezbollah. “But when you face certain technological advances, you need to go back to the old methods… whatever method allows you to circumvent the technology.”

Hezbollah’s media office said it had no comment on the sources’ assertions.

Security experts say some low-tech countermeasures can be quite effective against high-tech spying. One of the ways that al-Qaeda’s late leader, Osama bin Laden, evaded capture for nearly a decade was by disconnecting from the Internet and phone services, and using couriers instead.

“The simple act of using a VPN (virtual private network), or better yet, not using a cell phone at all, can make it much harder to find and fix a target,” said Emily Harding, a former CIA analyst now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.

Hezbollah and Lebanese security officials believe Israel has also been tapping local informants as it zeroes in on targets.

Lebanon’s economic crisis and rivalries between political factions have created opportunities for Israeli recruiters, but not all informants realise who they are speaking with, three sources said.

On November 22, a woman from south Lebanon received a call on her cell phone from a person claiming to be a local official, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the incident. Speaking in flawless Arabic, the caller asked whether the family was home, the sources said. No, the woman replied, explaining they had travelled to eastern Lebanon. Minutes later, a missile slammed into the woman’s home in the village of Beit Yahoun, killing five Hezbollah fighters including Abbas Raad, the son of a senior Hezbollah lawmaker and a Radwan member, the sources said.

Hezbollah believes Israel had tracked the fighters to the location and placed the call to confirm whether there were civilians present before launching the strike, they said without disclosing further details.

Within weeks, Hezbollah was publicly warning supporters via the affiliated Al-Nour radio station not to trust cold callers claiming to be local officials or aid workers, saying Israelis were impersonating them to identify houses being used by Hezbollah.

Hezbollah also suspected that Israel was targeting its fighters by tracking their cell phones and monitoring video feeds from security cameras installed on buildings in border communities, two sources familiar with the group’s thinking and a Lebanese intelligence official said.

On December 28, Hezbollah urged southern residents in a statement distributed via its Telegram channel to disconnect any security cameras they own from the Internet.

By early February, another directive had been issued to Hezbollah’s fighters: no mobile phones anywhere near the battlefield. “Today, if anyone is found with their phone on the front, he is kicked out of Hezbollah,” said a senior Lebanese source familiar with the group’s operations.

Even in Beirut, senior Hezbollah politicians avoid bringing phones with them to meetings, two other sources said.

Nicholas Blanford, a Beirut-based security consultant who has written a history of Hezbollah, said the group’s “awareness and wariness” of security breaches was at an all-time high. “Hezbollah has had to tighten up its security far more than it needed to do in earlier conflicts,” he said. However, Israel retains a technological advantage, Mr. Blanford said.

Tel Aviv:

The deputy chief of Hamas’s intelligence bureau, Shadi Barud was killed in a strike in the Gaza Strip today, according to the Israel Defence Forces.

The IDF accused Barud of working with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar to prepare the attacks in southern Israel on October 7.

Prior to this, Barud led battalions in the Khan Younis region and held various positions in the terror group’s intelligence directorate.

Taking to social media platform X, the IDF wrote, “Shadi Barud, Deputy Head of Hamas’ Intelligence Directorate has been eliminated by an IDF aerial strike. He took part in the planning of the October 7 massacre and countless other deadly attacks carried out against Israelis.”

“We will continue to strike and eliminate Hamas leaders and operatives responsible for the barbaric attacks,” it added.

According to the Israel Defence Forces, Barud “was responsible for planning numerous terror attacks against Israeli civilians,” The Times of Israel reported.

Notably, the Israeli fighter jets carried out overnight airstrikes over 250 Hamas sites in the Gaza Strip including a rocket launch site that was hidden between a mosque and kindergarten, Times of Israel reported on Thursday.

IDF has called this “another proof” that terror group Hamas uses “civilian sites for terror purposes”.

The sites struck by Israel included Hamas infrastructure, command centers, tunnels, and rocket launchers, according to the IDF. The IDF said that the rocket launchers were “placed in the heart of civilian areas that fired toward Israeli territory throughout the war.”

Israeli Air Force also said in a statement about attacking over 250 terror targets of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“Terrorist infrastructure, combat tunnel shafts and launchers in a civilian environment; The Air Force attacked over 250 targets of the terrorist organization Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In the last day, fighter jets of the Air Force attacked more than 250 targets of the terrorist organization Hamas in the Gaza Strip,” Israeli Air Force posted on X (formerly Twitter).

Meanwhile, the families of 224 hostages have been notified about their keen being held in the Gaza by Hamas, Times of Israel reported.

IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said that the military has so far notified the families of 224 hostages that their loved ones are being held in the Gaza Strip.

He said that the number is not final as the military investigates new information.

Notably, the number does not include four released hostages — mother and daughter Judith and Natalie Ra’anan, freed on Friday night, and elderly women Yocheved Lifshitz and Nurit Cooper released on Monday night, Times of Israel reported.

Hamas launched a massive terror attack on Israel on October 7, which killed over 1400 people and left several more injured.

After this, Israel launched a strong counter-offensive against Hamas units in Gaza strip.

According to the health ministry of Hamas, the death toll in Gaza has crossed 7,000, Times of Israel reported.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

U.S. President Joe Biden is considering a trip to Israel in the coming days but nothing has been finalised, a senior administration official said Sunday. The news comes as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been traveling around the Mideast this past week trying to prevent the war with Hamas from igniting a broader regional conflict

In an interview on Sunday, the president warned Israel not to reoccupy Gaza, in his strongest public effort to hold Israel back.

“I think it’d be a big mistake,” Mr. Biden said. “Look, what happened in Gaza, in my view, is Hamas, and the extreme elements of Hamas don’t represent all the Palestinian people. And I think that it would be a mistake for Israel to occupy Gaza again.”

Still, he said, “taking out the extremists … is a necessary requirement.”

– AP

New Delhi:

The Israel’s Defence Forces (IDF) today released footage showing and elite unit rescuing over 250 hostages near the Gaza security fence. Sixty Hamas terrorists were also killed as the Israel’s military’s “Shayetet 13” unit stormed the Sufa outpost.

The IDF said 250 hostages were rescued, while “over 60 Hamas terrorists were neutralised and 26 were apprehended, including Muhammad Abu A’ali, the Deputy Commander of the Hamas southern Naval Division.”

In the video released, the Israeli soldiers can be seen going inside the building and gun shots can be heard. A soldier is seen firing from behind cover and another throws a grenade at the outpost.  

״שייטת, שייטת, תישארו בבונקר, אנחנו באים!״ לוחמי שייטת 13 בקרב על מוצב סופה

כוחות יחידת שייטת 13 בסדיר ובמילואים הוזנקו במסוקים תוך זמן קצר עם הגעת הדיווחים על החדירה בגבול עזה בשבת בבוקר וחברו לכוחות הלוחמים בשטח למאמץ משותף.
הכוחות החלו בלחימה ביישובי העוטף ובים במקביל>> pic.twitter.com/dSQTqqj2yr

— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) October 12, 2023

“Go on, light them up. Clear, clear”, a soldier can be heard as they scan the premises. Another soldier can be seen escorting a hostage out of the bunker. He is the held against the wall, “Put a pistol to him. I got him”, he says.

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The soldiers then went inside the bunker and assured the hostages that they are here to “save” them and if they need “any first aid”.

Later in the footage, soldiers can be seen carrying a stretcher.

Today, marks the seventh day of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war with peace proposals nowhere on the table. At least 1,200 have died in Israel and another 1,400 in Gaza strip since the war began. Besides, the bodies of 1,500 Hamas operatives were found in the Israeli territory, the government has claimed.

The unit was deployed to the area surrounding the Gaza security fence in a joint effort to regain control of the Sufa military post on October 7.