Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated ‘after being smeared with chemical that allowed Israeli spies to track him’

Israel has killed Hezbollah’s leader after he was doused with a chemical that allowed spies to track his movements, it was claimed yesterday.

Hassan Nasrallah shook hands with an Israeli agent who passed on the unknown substance, a Saudi Arabian news channel reported.

The agent is believed to have been an Iranian visiting Beirut, where Nasrallah was killed in an airstrike on Friday, news channel Al Hadath claimed.

Security sources have suggested that the substance could have been identified by a sensor or camera on board a low-flying drone. An Israeli statement on his killing noted that the operation was “directed by” the country’s Intelligence Directorate.

Israeli ‘micro-drones’ provide constant coverage of the Lebanese capital and are small enough to be invisible to the naked eye when flying over buildings. Alternatively, Nasrallah or one of his close associates may have been sprayed with an invisible chemical marking agent.

Flames rise after an Israeli airstrike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon on Saturday

If no chemical was used, another explanation would be that a source provided information about his whereabouts. Nasrallah’s body was found intact beneath the remains of the building. In total, more than twenty Hezbollah members were killed by the Israeli air force.

Markers such as Nitrophenyl Pentadienal, known as a ‘spy substance’, were used by the KGB during the Cold War.

Israel is known to be at the forefront of research involving the United States and Britain into the challenges of contemporary urban warfare.

The country is also thought to have a connected network of hidden cameras and biosensors in Beirut that monitor key locations and the local population.

One of these technologies is called “Bionet,” described by one security source as “a deployable network of rapidly spreading biological and biomimetic nodes that can infiltrate a city to sense and transmit data.”

The Israelis also use artificial intelligence to sift through vast amounts of data on Hezbollah’s human targets and present the information in the most relevant form.

This system is believed to save its agents hundreds of hours in sifting through signals and messages collected through intercepts.

Another new technology apparently being used by Israel to infiltrate Hezbollah is called ‘EMS Persona’.

This is a collection of realistic, diverse ‘virtual people’ with a verifiable digital history used to communicate with sympathizers online.