The Daily Telegraph - 26.08.2019

Israel bombs Iranian ‘killer drones’ in Syria

By Sara Elizabeth Williams in Amman
and Joseph Haboush in Beirut

THE prospect of an Israel-Hizbollah
war came closer yesterday after Israel
bombed Iranian and Hizbollah forces
in Syria and was accused of carrying
out a botched drone strike in Lebanon.
Hasan Nasrallah, the secretary-gen-

eral of Hizbollah, last night warned of a

“new phase of war” with Israel after

the “targeted attack” in southern Bei-

rut, and vowed “the time when Israel

would strike anywhere in Lebanon and

stay secure has ended”.

The first part of what appears to have

been a two-part Israeli strike on both

Iran and its proxy Hizbollah was an air

strike late on Saturday night in Aqraba,

south-east of Damascus.

One Iranian and two Hizbollah fight-

ers were killed in a strike that the Is-

raeli military said targeted a “killer

drone” site run by Iran’s Quds force.

The facility had been preparing to

launch an attack on the Jewish state,

a spokesperson added.

Hours later, residents in the south-

ern suburbs of Beirut awoke to a loud

blast as a drone exploded above a Hiz-

bollah media centre in the Moawwad

neighbourhood, just a  few miles from

Beirut’s international airport.

No casualties were reported.

Saad Hariri, prime minister of Leba-

non, called the incident a “clear viola-

tion” of Lebanese sovereignty and the

UN resolution that ended the last

Israel-Hizbollah war in 2006.

“This new aggression ... forms a

threat to regional stability and an

attempt to push the situation towards

more tension,” Mr Hariri said.

In Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benja-

min Netanyahu hailed the Syria strike

as a “major operational effort”.

“I reiterate: Iran has no immunity

anywhere. Our forces operate in every

sector against the Iranian aggression.

‘If someone rises up to kill you, kill him

first’,” he tweeted, quoting the Talmud.

Israel has neither confirmed nor

denied any action in Lebanon.

Israel fears Hizbollah has become a

more formidable opponent since it

entered the Syrian conflict on the side

of President Bashar al-Assad in 2012.

This has allowed its fighters to gain bat-

tlefield experience and build up a phys-

ical presence east of the Golan.

Israeli officials also claim Hezbollah

has amassed a vast arsenal of rockets

In a televised address, Mr Nasrallah

said that yesterday’s incident in south-

ern Beirut was the first attack since the

2006 Israel-Hizbollah war, framing Tel

Aviv as the first party to break the func-

tional détente that has prevailed since

then.

Longstanding pressure from the

government in Beirut has kept Mr Nas-

rallah from sending his group’s fighters

into theatres besides Syria, at the risk

of dragging Lebanon into unwanted

conflicts.

Yesterday, Mr Nasrallah suggested

things had now changed due to Israel’s

actions.

Despite Mr Nasrallah’s comments,

Mr Hariri said that Lebanon would “ex-

ert all efforts toward restraint and eas-

ing the tensions”.

Air strikes against Iranian

forces near Damascus

raise the threat of new

Israel-Hizbollah war

‘Iran has no immunity

anywhere. Our forces

operate in every sector

against Iranian aggression’

South Korean Army special forces take part in an exercise on islands in the Sea of Japan

Japan lodges protest against

South Korea’s military drills

By Our Foreign Staff

SOUTH KOREAN forces began two

days of expanded drills yesterday

around an island claimed by Japan,

prompting a protest from Tokyo only

days after Seoul said it would scrap an

intelligence-sharing pact with its

neighbour amid worsening relations.

Tokyo and Seoul have long been at

loggerheads over the sovereignty of

the group of islets called Takeshima in

Japanese and Dokdo in Korean, which

lie about halfway between the East

Asian neighbours in the Sea of Japan,

also known as the East Sea.

The latest military drills included

naval, air, and army forces, as well as

marines, a South Korean ministry of

defence official said. The Japanese for-

eign ministry called the drills unaccep-

table and said it had lodged a protest

with South Korea calling for them to end.

Ko Min-jung, a spokeswoman for

South Korea’s presidential Blue House,

said the drill was an annual exercise,

not aimed at any specific country. “It’s

an exercise to guard our sovereignty and

territory,” she told reporters in Seoul.

However, the exercise included

more South Korean forces than previ-

ously and spanned a wider area in the

sea between South Korea and Japan, a

South Korean navy official told Reuters.

Tensions in the region have spiked

amid a worsening political and eco-

nomic spat between South Korea and

Japan, a string of missile launches by

North Korea, and increasingly assertive

military patrols by China and Russia.

World news

Nuclear plant

worker ‘stole’

electricity to

mine bitcoin

By Roland Oliphant

A UKRAINIAN nuclear power plant

worker will have to pay for “stolen”

electricity after he set up an illegal bit-

coin mining operation at the station.

The illicit operation came to light

when the SBU, Ukraine’s internal secu-

rity service, searched the facility and

uncovered computer equipment set up

to “mine” the cryptocurrency.

Mining cryptocurrencies is an ex-

pensive drain on power as it often re-

quires vast computer servers to solve

complex puzzles in exchange for vir-

tual coins. According to court papers

filed in Mykolaev city in the south of

the country, agents believe details of

the plant’s security arrangements, a

state secret in Ukraine, could have

been leaked on to the internet.

Ukrainian media suggested it in-

volved members of the National Guard,

who were meant to protect the site.

The power station, which runs three

nuclear reactors, acknowledged an il-

licit mining site had been found but de-

nied a security breach.

“A search was carried out which re-

vealed that in one of the storage rooms,

a power plant employee had placed his

own computer equipment for crypto-

currency mining,” stated EnergoAtom,

Ukraine’s nuclear monopoly. “The in-

vestigation revealed the seized equip-

ment had no physical connection to the

plant’s network, so reports about a leak

of information are unfounded.”

The would-be crypto millionaire did

not escape without punishment. As his

“private computer devices” consumed

company electricity during work time,

he was demoted and will have to pay

back “the amount of material losses

caused by electricity consumption for

personal non-official needs.” How

much this comes to is not yet known.

Last year Russian nuclear engineers

were arrested after using a supercom-

puter at a sensitive nuclear site for Bit-

coin mining. In February 2018 SBU

officers confiscated computers used to

mine bitcoin at a semiconductor plant

in Kiev. They said the proceeds were

being used for Russian-backed separa-

tists fighting in the east of the country.

In 2017, kidnappers seized an em-

ployee of a UK-linked cryptocurrency

firm in Kiev and only released him

when a ransom of bitcoin worth $1 mil-

lion (£815,000) was paid.

Afghan boy

kills teenager

in Greek island

refugee camp

By Andrea Vogt

A TEENAGE asylum seeker was killed
and two others injured when they were
stabbed in a fight at the overcrowded
Moria refugee camp on the Greek
island of Lesbos.
According to Greek media, tensions
exploded inside the “safe zone” of the
camp’s juvenile ward on Saturday night
among some of the more than 600 un-
accompanied minors staying in the
unit, designed to hold just 160.
A 15-year-old Afghan boy attacked
the others, also said to be from Afghan-
istan, with a knife, the state agency
ANA reported. One remained in a seri-
ous condition yesterday.
The latest violence has sparked calls
for EU member states to relocate more
quickly the children languishing in
dangerous, squalid conditions on Les-
bos, as well as similar camps on Chios
and Samos.
Like many, the Moria camp is now

packed to more than three times its ca-
pacity. “We are now between 9,
and 10,000 people here, and the trans-
fers out are not at all proportional to
the arrivals, which just in the last
month have been 750 a week,” said
Marco Sandrone, Médecins Sans Fron-
tières field coordinator for Lesbos.
“The extreme overcrowding is pro-
voking tensions between those living
in the camp, which has inadequate ser-
vices and a lack of security. The already
precarious situation is continuing to
deteriorate.”
Unicef called for all refugees and mi-
grants to be transferred from Greece’s
islands to the mainland.
“We are devastated by the tragic
death of a child at the reception and
identification centre in Moria,” Unicef
for Europe and Central Asia said on
Twitter. “The situation on the Greek
islands is at a breaking point.”
The Moria centre is just one of 50
camps and hot spots holding approxi-
mately 90,000 migrants and asylum
seekers across Greece’s mainland,
northern frontiers and Aegean islands.

Moving spectacle Couples dance to mariachi music in Guadalajara, Mexico, as they break the Guinness World Record for

the largest Mexican folk dance. A total of 882 people in traditional costumes took part in the successful challenge.

ULISES RUIZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

‘The extreme overcrowding

is provoking tensions

between those living

in the camp’

14 ***^ Monday 26 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph

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