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World

Israel planted explosives in 5,000 Hezbollah’s pagers, say sources

  • The plot, which killed nine people and wounded nearly 3,000 others, appears to have been many months in the making
Published September 18, 2024
A man’s bag explodes in a supermarket in Beirut, Lebanon September 17, 2024 in this screen grab from a video obtained from social media. Photo: Reuters
A man’s bag explodes in a supermarket in Beirut, Lebanon September 17, 2024 in this screen grab from a video obtained from social media. Photo: Reuters

BEIRUT: Israel’s Mossad spy agency planted explosives inside 5,000 pagers imported by Lebanese group Hezbollah months before Tuesday’s detonations, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.

The operation was an unprecedented security breach that saw thousands of pagers detonate across Lebanon, killing nine people and wounding nearly 3,000 others, including some of the group’s fighters and Iran’s envoy to Beirut.

The Lebanese security source said the pagers were from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, but the company said it did not manufacture the devices, but were made by a European firm with the right to use its brand.

 People walk near an ambulance outside American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) as people were wounded and killed when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon, according to a security source, in Beirut, Lebanon. Photo: Reuters
People walk near an ambulance outside American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) as people were wounded and killed when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon, according to a security source, in Beirut, Lebanon. Photo: Reuters

Iran-backed Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, whose military declined to comment on the blasts.

At least eight dead, 2,750 wounded in pager blasts in Lebanon

The plot appears to have been many months in the making, several sources told Reuters.

The senior Lebanese security source said the group had ordered 5,000 beepers from Gold Apollo, which several sources say were brought into the country earlier this year.

Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that had the right to use the Taipei-based firm’s brand, the name of which he could not immediately confirm.

“The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it,” he told reporters on Wednesday, without naming the company which did make the devices.

The senior Lebanese security source identified a photograph of the model of the pager, an AP924, which like other pagers wirelessly receive and display text messages but cannot make telephone calls.

Hezbollah fighters have been using pagers as a low-tech means of communication in an attempt to evade Israeli location-tracking, two sources familiar with the group’s operations told Reuters this year.

But the senior Lebanese source said the devices had been modified by Israel’s spy service “at the production level.”

“The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It’s very hard to detect it through any means. Even with any device or scanner,” the source said.

Israel widens focus of war to include Lebanon front

The source said 3,000 of the pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them, simultaneously activating the explosives.

Another security source told Reuters that up to three grams of explosives were hidden in the new pagers and had gone “undetected” by Hezbollah for months.

Israeli officials did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Images of destroyed pagers analysed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo.

Hezbollah was reeling from the attack, which left fighters and others bloodied, hospitalised or dead.

One Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the detonation was the group’s “biggest security breach” since the Gaza war began on October 7.

“This would easily be the biggest counterintelligence failure that Hezbollah has had in decades,” said Jonathan Panikoff, the US government’s former deputy national intelligence officer on the Middle East.

Break your phones, group ordered

In February, Hezbollah drew up a war plan that aimed to address gaps in the group’s intelligence infrastructure.

Around 170 fighters had already been killed in targeted Israeli strikes on Lebanon, including one senior commander and a top Hamas official in Beirut.

In a televised speech on Feb. 13, the group’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah sternly warned supporters that their phones were more dangerous than Israeli spies, saying they should break, bury or lock them in an iron box.

Instead, the group opted to distribute pagers to Hezbollah members across the group’s various branches - from fighters to medics working in its relief services.

Israeli minister says time running out for diplomatic solution with Hezbollah in Lebanon

The explosions maimed many Hezbollah members, according to footage from hospitals reviewed by Reuters.

Wounded men had injuries of varying degrees to the face, missing fingers and gaping wounds at the hip where the pagers were likely worn.

“We really got hit hard,” said the senior Lebanese security source, who has direct knowledge of the group’s probe into the explosions.

The pager blasts came at a time of mounting concern about tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, which have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the Gaza war.

While the war in Gaza has been Israel’s main point of aggression, the precarious situation along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon has fueled fears of a regional conflict that could drag in the United States and Iran.

A missile barrage by Hezbollah the day after Oct. 7 opened the latest phase of conflict and since then there have been daily exchanges of rockets, artillery fire and missiles, with Israeli jets striking deep into Lebanese territory.

 A personnel of American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) stands next to an empty stretcher, as people were wounded and killed when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon, according to a security source, in Beirut, Lebanon. Photo: Reuters
A personnel of American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) stands next to an empty stretcher, as people were wounded and killed when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon, according to a security source, in Beirut, Lebanon. Photo: Reuters

Hezbollah has said it does not seek a wider war but would fight if Israel launched one.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on Monday that the window was closing for a diplomatic solution to the standoff with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement in southern Lebanon.

Still, experts said they did not see the pager blasts as a sign that an Israeli ground aggression was imminent.

Instead, it was a sign of Israeli intelligence’s apparently deep penetration of Hezbollah.

“It demonstrates Israel’s ability to infiltrate its adversaries in a remarkably dramatic way,” said Paul Pillar, a 28-year veteran of the US intelligence community, mainly at the CIA.

Comments

200 characters
Sarib Irfan Sep 18, 2024 10:40am
Electrical engineering DAE
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Builder Sep 18, 2024 11:43am
We should all learn lessons from this incident. They are way ahead of us in technology, so should be very careful when using their technology. Should open and inspect such devices before using.
thumb_up Recommended (0) reply Reply
Builder Sep 18, 2024 01:55pm
Indigenisation is the best approach. Should focus on higher education, R & D and commercialisation of research so that we can make such stuff in-house.
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test Sep 18, 2024 05:27pm
@Builder, Muslim countries using western weapons, western technology, western smartphones, western laptops, western computers, western cloud services, western gps, western vehicles, western aircrafts.
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