Israel's Mossad: From 'satellite machine guns' to kidnapping Nazis.

Almost 3,000 people were injured and at least 12 killed this week when pagers and walkie-talkies used by members of Hezbollah exploded in a shockingly coordinated attack of unprecedented scope and scale.

Nobody has yet assumed responsibility for the crippling security breach, believed to be the result of a shady operation stretching from Hungary to Taiwan which has ushered in a new era of psychological and technological warfare.

But the fingers of officials, analysts and experts from all corners of the globe are pointed squarely at one prime suspect.

Since its creation in 1949, Mossad - Israel's infamous secret service - has developed a reputation for conducting intricate and ruthlessly effective operations on a global scale.

It was harshly criticised for failing to prevent Hamas' October 7 attacks last year but has been working hard to make up for those shortcomings.

Its operatives and intelligence were almost certainly instrumental in the killing of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh as he slept in an Iranian safe house in Tehran earlier this year - not to mention strikes which eliminated Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukur and another Hamas military leader, Mohammed Deif.

Now, as investigators scramble to work out just how it pulled off the stunning attack on its foes in Lebanon, MailOnline re-examines some of the formidable spy agency's most notorious operations.

Hunting Nazis: Operation Eichmann, 1960

One of Mossad's first major international operations, pulled off 11 years after its formation in 1949, remains one of its most celebrated - the capture of Nazi official Adolf Eichmann.

Known as the 'architect of the Holocaust' for his leading role in orchestrating and implementing the Nazi's genocidal Final Solution to the so-called 'Jewish Question', Eichmann - like so many of his ilk - fled Germany after the Second World War to seek refuge in South America.

Operating under the name Ricardo Klement, Eichmann lived for years in obscurity, employed at a Mercedes Benz dealership in Buenos Aires and going about his business as a regular working father-of-three. 

That was until he was identified by a crack team of Mossad operatives led by special operations agent Rafi Eitan.

His agents in Argentina locked onto Eichmann's trail when Luther Herman, a half-Jewish emigre of German descent, told them his young daughter was being courted by a 20-year-old man calling himself Nick Eichmann.

Herman said he became suspicious when his daughter's pursuer expressed anti-Semitic statements over dinner, and the agents managed to track down his address - the 'Klement' family home in the Buenos Aires suburb of San Fernando. 

They managed to snap a photograph of Nick's father and quickly identified the seemingly harmless family man as one of the masterminds of Hitler's genocidal campaign against the Jews. 

Mr Eitan, who headed a seven-man team on the ground, grabbed Eichmann on the way back to his Buenos Aires home, shoved him into a car and spirited him to a safe house. The top Nazi official was subsequently smuggled out of Argentina and back to Israel.

He stood trial for war crimes, was found guilty and executed in 1962. 

Operation Eichmann was a watershed moment in the pursuit of Nazi war criminals after World War II, and has been forever immortalised in various books and films.

Before his death in 2021, Mossad agent Eitan penned a feature for MailOnline in which he gave his first-hand account of Eichmann's capture. 

Smuggling uranium: The 'Plumbat' Affair, 1968

In the years after the creation of Israel, its Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was hell-bent on building a nuclear weapons programme.

Having viewed the devastating power of the atomic bomb spearheaded by Robert Oppenheimer and the subsequent pioneering of hydrogen weapons by Edward Teller - both of whom were Jews - Ben-Gurion felt that nuclear devices represented the ultimate deterrent against Israel's foes and a guarantee that the Holocaust could never be replicated.

In 1956, Israel began building its first nuclear reactor, and by the mid-1960s is believed to have started production of nuclear weapons, though it has always maintained a policy of ambiguity over its nuclear programme. 

But to produce such weapons at scale, Israel needed to secure large quantities of uranium. Enter Mossad, which hatched a cunning scheme.

Using a fake company to purchase a German freight ship, the agency arranged to buy some 200 tons of uranium ore mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from a Belgian company. 

The uranium ore was supposedly destined for a chemical company in Italy - again a work of fiction concocted by Mossad - and was signed off on by Euratom, the European Atomic Energy Community.

But the ship mysteriously disappeared in the Mediterranean days after setting sail from the port of Antwerp.

It later reappeared in a Turkish port, and authorities were shocked to find the vessel completely empty. 

The 200 tons of 'yellowcake' uranium - enough to produce dozens of nuclear bombs - had been smuggled into Israel in barrels marked 'plumbat' - a lead-based product. 

Mossad never took credit for the dastardly scheme, but the operation was later exposed off the back of lengthy investigations by journalists and security officials in a 1978 book entitled 'The Plumbat Affair'.

Revenge tour: Operation Wrath of God, 1972-1978

At the 1972 Munich Olympics, the 'Black September' Palestinian extremist group took eleven Israeli athletes hostage and ultimately murdered them, marking one of the darkest moments in the history of the Olympic Games.

The 1972 massacre started as a hostage crisis when the militants infiltrated the Munich Olympic Village and used stolen keys to enter two apartments being used by the Israeli Olympic team, killing two Israelis and kidnapping nine more.

The group demanded the release of 234 Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel, and also demanded a plane from West German authorities for their escape.

At the airport, the Black September members engaged in a fierce gun battle with West German police and killed all their hostages before being gunned down.

Enraged Israeli officials launched Operation Wrath of God, a covert campaign to track down and eliminate those responsible for orchestrating the Munich attack and others connected to Palestinian militant organisations. 

The operation was approved by then-Israeli PM Golda Meir, and Mossad was granted a leading role in directing the assassinations. 

Palestinian intellectual and alleged Black September member, Wael Zwaiter - a cousin of Palestinian Liberation Organisation chairman Yasser Arafat - was shot dead in Rome just five weeks after the Munich Olympics massacre.

That kicked off a seven-year assassination campaign by Mossad which saw several Palestinian militants eradicated, culminating in 1979 with the fatal car-bombing of Ali Hassan Salameh - the man believed to be the mastermind behind the Munich attacks.

But a botched assassination attempt in 1973 caused a major diplomatic storm and saw Israel's intelligence networks in Europe severely undermined.

Mossad agents thought they had located Salameh in the Norwegian city of Lillehammer and killed him - but it quickly became clear they had misidentified their target and murdered an innocent Moroccan waiter.

Investigations by the horrified Norwegian police saw several Mossad operatives rooted out and jailed, and many of the Israeli outfit's European assets were exposed. 

Hostage rescue: Entebbe Raid, 1976

On 27 June, 1976, an Air France passenger jet flying from Tel-Aviv to Paris was hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) - a faction of the PLO notorious for carrying out such operations.

Having stormed the jet during a layover in Athens, the PFLP flew to Libya and onto Uganda, where ruthless dictator Idi Amin offered them refuge and authorised the hijackers to land at Entebbe International Airport. 

The group quickly released many of the passengers but held 105 that were determined to be Israeli or Jewish, using them as bargaining chips to negotiate the release of Palestinian militants imprisoned in Israel and elsewhere.

Mossad was tasked with collecting vital information to launch a daring raid of Entebbe's airport, tracking down the released hostages, accessing plans of the airport terminals and drawing up a plan of attack with the Sayeret Matkal - one of Israel's most fearsome special forces units. 

Just five days later, a contingent of some 100 Israeli operatives flew into Uganda under cover of night, led by current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's brother, Yonatan. 

The team launched a stunning raid of the airport, gunning down every single PFLP hijacker, more than 40 Ugandan soldiers that had offered their support, and destroyed almost a dozen Ugandan air force jets while somehow managing to rescue 102 of 105 hostages. 

Yonatan Netanyahu was the only Israeli operative killed in the raid and was lauded as a hero. 

The operation remains one of the most well-planned and executed hostage rescues of all time and Mossad is widely credited for its involvement. 

Bombing Iraq's nuclear plant: Operation Opera, 1981

With Israel committed to expanding its nuclear weapons capabilities throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Iraq's Saddam Hussein was desperate to follow suit. 

In 1976, Hussein managed to secure permission to construct a reactor from France, purchasing an Osiris-class facility to be installed and maintained by French experts, purportedly for nuclear energy research.

Israel however felt the risk of Hussein attempting to build a new arsenal of devastating weapons was too great and sought to disrupt his fledgling nuclear programme.

Mossad became locked in a race against time, waging an intense campaign of intelligence gathering and sabotage in the hopes of destroying the reactor, which French scientists had nicknamed Osirak, before it could be finished. 

Via its agents, assets and contacts in France and the Middle East, Mossad managed to delay the shipment of key parts to Iraq and sabotaged other ones.

Meanwhile, they accumulated a wealth of knowledge about the reactor's exact location just south of Baghdad, its construction and vulnerabilities.

Their efforts culminated in June 1981 - just weeks before the reactor was expected to go online - when Israel's air force planned a destructive strike based on intelligence reports formulated by Mossad.

A flight of Israeli fighter jets conducted a critical bombing raid that utterly demolished the plant and set Hussein's nuclear aspirations back at least five years - not to mention killing 10 members of his military. 

The death of a French scientist prompted a significant backlash from Europe, but the operation nonetheless stands out as an impressive example of Mossad's sabotage and intelligence-gathering capabilities.   

Slaying a visionary: Assassination of Gerard Bull, 1990

From 1990 onwards, many of Mossad's major exploits have taken the form of assassinations. One of the most infamous is the murder of Canadian scientist Gerard Bull. 

Bull was perhaps one of the 20th century's greatest 'what-if' stories - his tale one of wasted potential.

A highly intelligent and creative inventor with huge ambition, Bull pioneered the development of 'supergun' technology, a device that he believed could launch satellites and other projectiles to incredibly high altitudes - even space - at a fraction of the cost of rocket technology.

In the 1960s he led the High Altitude Research Project (HARP), an American-Canadian initiative that sought to research and innovate new approaches to reaching orbit.

Bull and his team successfully adapted retired naval weapons to launch small satellites several kilometres into the air, and his designs for a true 'supergun' that could fire a projectile to punch through Earth's atmosphere and into space showed significant promise.

But his dreams were shattered in 1967 when HARP was axed amid NASA's space programme and the outbreak of war in Vietnam - a decision that set the visionary down a dark path, and ultimately led to his demise.

Bull became obsessed with the idea of a spacegun, but in the 1970s all his attempts to drum up capital fell on deaf ears. So the academic turned to more nefarious means to fund his research.

His expertise in ballistics and munitions enabled him to begin selling arms, acts for which he was fined and imprisoned by the US - but he refused to stop his relentless pursuit of realising his ultimate dream of creating a spacegun.

By the 1980s, Bull's work - not to mention his appetite for risk and moral flexibility - caught the attention of Saddam Hussein, and in 1988 the two struck a deal that saw Iraq offer some $25 million to Bull to launch Project Babylon.

The project aimed to create two gargantuan guns that would be able to launch a satellite into orbit - or a huge missile into Iran or Israel. 

Construction of the massive guns began - and one smaller prototype called 'Baby Babylon' was completed and entered testing in 1989. 

But Israel, fearful that Iraq could use Bull's technology to author a destructive strike and concerned about the Canadian's work on Hussein's ballistic missile programme, sought to put an end to the project before it could produce a real threat.

In 1990, Bull was shot five times as he entered an apartment in Brussels, and Project Babylon never came to fruition. 

The killer was never established, but Mossad is widely accused of orchestrating the cold assassination. 

Eliminating Hezbollah's general: Assassination of Imad Mughniyah, 2008

Mossad in 2008 celebrated one of its most high-profile and meaningful operations - the assassination of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyah in cooperation with the CIA.

Mughniyah, who was often referred to by Western press as the 'Osama bin Laden of the 1980s' and operated under the nom de guerre Al-Hajj Radwan, was the Lebanese group's de-facto chief of staff.

He was thought to be responsible for the deaths of more Westerners in terrorist attacks than any other militant until 9/11.

Mughniyah masterminded some of Hezbollah's most spectacular terrorist attacks, including those against the US Embassy in Beirut and the Israeli Embassy in Argentina, and also orchestrated the kidnap in Beirut of Terry Waite and other British hostages.

He was also suspected of being directly involved in the financing and arming of militias that were targeting US forces at the height of the Iraq war.

There were rumours that Mughniyah took extreme steps to remain incognito and protect himself from Western and Israeli surveillance, including significant plastic surgery to alter his appearance. He earned the moniker the 'untraceable ghost', such was his ability to seemingly evade surveillance and capture for decades.

But his skills and luck eventually ran out in 2008 when he was eliminated in a savage car bomb in Syria's capital of Damascus. 

Mossad and the CIA are said to have collaborated closely on the operation, with the US believed to have designed the bomb before Mossad agents, supported by US intelligence, planted it in Damascus.  

In the wake of the assassination, the US State Department said in a statement: 'The world is a better place without this man in it. He was a cold-blooded killer, a mass-murderer and a terrorist responsible for countless innocent lives lost.

Hitting Hamas: Assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, 2010

Two years after Mughniyah's killing, Mossad pulled off one of their most elaborate assassinations ever - but not without controversy. 

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was the chief of weapons procurement for Hamas's military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, and a such took all manner of security precautions when travelling. 

He routinely travelled under aliases and false documents and was heavily guarded wherever he went.

But when he visited Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in February of 2010, he made the fatal mistake of thinking he could travel in relative safety, opting to go without a bodyguard and booking his flight personally over the Internet.

From the moment he passed through immigration control he was being surveilled and tailed by dozens of Mossad operatives, all of whom were meticulously disguised.

Upon his arrival at the al-Bustan Hotel, he was completely unaware that Mossad agents had not only booked a room opposite his, but had scrambled the hotel's electronic lock to ensure they could gain access without leaving a trace of a forced entry.

Stepping out of the hotel lift, al-Mabhouh walked straight past a hotel employee - who was in fact a Mossad undercover guard - and entered his room.

He was immediately pounced upon by four more agents who injected him a muscle relaxant before suffocating him to death with a pillow. 

Once the Hamas official was dead, the Mossad operatives went to great lengths to cover their tracks. They dressed him in pyjamas and painstakingly arranged him in bed, gathered all traces of their presence, and fled the country before the body was discovered.

But the assassins had made a pair of key errors. In their rush to escape, they had not noticed a small spotting of blood left behind by the injection, and they had suffocated the Hamas leader with too much force, leaving slight bruising to his face. 

Dubai authorities launched a murder probe and weeks later unveiled a torrent of CCTV footage implicating the agents in the murder. It was also revealed that the agents had stolen and cloned passports of innocent citizens from various countries - including 12 from Britain.

Technological terror: Assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh 

The killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, one of Iran's top nuclear scientists, was a testament to Mossad's technological superiority and precision capabilities.

Fakhrizadeh was seen as Iran's leading nuclear physicist, but also headed up the country's Defence, Research and Innovation Organisation, with Israel suspecting him of being implicated in the development of Iran's nuclear weapons programme.

He was shot some 13 times as he travelled in his car alongside his wife on a road outside Iran's capital Tehran on November 27, 2020.

Initial reports suggested he was gunned down by a crack team of Israeli snipers, but it was later revealed that the leading scientist was slain by a remote-operated machine gun mounted on another vehicle that pulled up next to his.

The weapon, which was discovered by Iranian investigators after they inspected the wreckage of its carrier vehicle, was controlled online via an Israeli satellite, according to Ali Fadavi, an admiral in Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The precision of the weapon was exceptional - Fakhrizadeh was slaughtered by the torrent of bullets, yet his wife sitting beside him escaped unhurt. 

Claims that Fakhrizadeh was killed by some kind of killer robot weapon controlled by Israel were initially laughed off and Iran's officials ridiculed. 

But a slew of American, Israeli and Iranian sources subsequently confirmed to various journalists and investigators that the painstakingly planned operation was indeed authored by Mossad and Israel's Defence Forces, and that the bullets had been fired by an Israeli operative sitting thousands of kilometres away from the scene.

The weapon was only discovered and the chain of events pieced together by Iranian investigators due to a failure of the self-destruct charge implanted on the vehicle carrying the satellite-operated gun.

The charge went off as planned, but effectively jettisoned the gun and its control systems and set fire to the vehicle, instead of destroying the murder weapon itself.