On that Friday, January 5, 1996, Yahya Ayyash, the “Engineer” as he was known to everyone, since he was the chief bomb maker for Hamas, had woken up at 7 a.m., even though he had slept through the night. When the phone belonging to his friend with the number 050507497 rang at eight forty sharp, he knew it was his father, to whom he had texted the number of that device to call him.
What the man who slipped out of Mossad like an eel didn’t know was that his friend’s Motorola had been booby-trapped with explosives, following an incredible operation by Israeli agents that was reminiscent of a movie.
Over the town of Beit Lahia, where the “Engineer” was staying, an Israeli plane circled around waiting for the call from Ayah’s father, who called him, and at the first ring they sent the phone signal to the Operations Center, which was coordinating the mission. When the voice of the man responsible for the deaths of 150 people was heard saying “Father, what are you doing?”
The booby-trapped phone his friend was holding was detonated by agents in a building very close to Ayas’s house, shattering the right side of his face.
The Israeli Mossad and Shin Bet agents who handled the operation had done such a thorough job in terms of the amount of explosives that the hand of the terrorist holding the phone was unharmed by the blast, while his friend, who was standing nearby, sustained only a laceration. Ayas’s father called again and again, but a message repeated at least three times that his call was forwarded, and a short time later he learned the fate of his son, who was sealed by Israel’s notorious intelligence services with a rigged phone.
This hit was considered until a few days ago one of the top achievements of the Mossad and the Shin Bet, since this particular target was very difficult to track, was very careful about his movements, disguised himself and was always one step ahead.
The key person and the best friend
Yaya Ayas disguised himself as a woman wearing a burqa to get around the Gaza Strip, and he certainly never imagined that the Israelis would shoot him with a mobile phone belonging to a friend. Mossad and Shin Bet first approached Kamal Haddad – Osama’s uncle, who was a close friend of ‘The Engineer – who was a manufacturer and let him know that all he could do was help them in the operation they had planned.
Haddad, the manufacturer, bought a Motorola cell phone – at that time cell phones were still rare and very expensive – which he gave as a gift to Osama Haddad’s nephew and, when Ayas saw it, asked him to use it to communicate more securely with his family. The water was well and truly under the bridge and when Kamal asked his nephew for the phone one day with an excuse that his own had broken, the young man gave it to him and it ended up in the hands of the Israelis. Shin Bet experts placed 50 grams of RDX explosive in the battery compartment of the phone, an amount sufficient to kill only the person who had that phone in his ear and was talking.
Osama was shocked to see the left side of Ayia’s face intact and the right side all smashed to bits a few seconds after the explosion, an eerie image of horror he never forgot. As for his uncle, according to a report in the Independent, a few months after Ayas was shot, he was allegedly paid $1,000,000 by the Israelis, who provided him with a fake passport and a visa to America. He has never been seen again since!
Jon Kyriakou: “The Israelis wanted to cut off Hezbollah’s head”
John Kyriakou, a former CIA operative with a stint in the Middle East, commented to protothema.gr on the most impressive Mossad strike, with the simultaneous detonation of thousands of bombs and portable radios used by the organization: ‘I spoke to several friends of mine, including the former counter-terrorism director at the FBI, who made the following points: This was clearly a hit on Hezbollah’s communications supply chain operation.
The Israelis either created the Hungarian company with the bombers or stole them, after they were shipped from Taiwan, in a very well-organized special operation, and that’s when they put the explosives in the bombers.”
He continued: “This move will cause further disruption in that supply chain for Hezbollah, and there is now a move in Lebanon to buy communication devices only from Huawei because it is a highly trusted company. The Israelis went ahead with this particular strike for several reasons. First, they hoped to cut off Hezbollah’s head. They did not succeed. Now they have to face a real war and the last time they fought the Lebanese, they lost. Second, Israel was fervently hoping that a battle on a second front would force the United States to join its side, but that simply won’t happen. We have repeatedly told the Israelis over the last 25 years that we are not interested in helping them attack Iran. We are even less interested in helping them fight Hezbollah.”
