The office of the caretaker Minister of Culture, Judge Mohammad Mortada, received a call on Monday from a person speaking in formal Arabic, warning of the need to evacuate the office as it was being targeted.
Additionally, the office of the caretaker Minister of Information, Ziad Makary, also received a voice threat from an automated message, calling for the immediate evacuation of the ministry building.
Makary then issued a statement affirming that a significant number of citizens in Beirut and surrounding areas received random standardized phone messages via the landline network, urging them to evacuate their current location. The Ministry of Information was one of the recipients of this message. “This is yet another violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty,” Makary commented, stressing that such actions only escalate tensions in the region.
In the same context, Director General of Ogero, Imad Kreidieh, strongly denied allegations that Israel successfully hacked into the country’s landline network in the south.
In an interview with Al-Nashra on Monday, Kreidieh clarified that the landline network system in Lebanon blocks all communications from Israel. But Israel “circumvents the communications systems by using the international phone code of a friendly country.”
Because Israel and Lebanon are technically at war, Lebanon forbids communications with Israel and Lebanese landlines cannot receive calls from Israeli ones.
“If any communication comes through non-Israeli international codes, it is not a breach of the system, but rather a circumvention of international protocols,” he stated.
“Fortunately, our servers are old and difficult to penetrate,” he added, reassuring the public that any suspicious calls should be reported to authorities for proper investigation.
Despite these denials, multiple reports claim that Israel has contacted residents in the Tyre district via landline, warning them to stay away from Hezbollah sites as Israeli forces prepare to escalate their strikes.
