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A pager bomb attack that left roughly 2,800 Hezbollah members and civilians injured and nine dead in Lebanon and Syria yesterday was authored by Israel’s Mossad spy agency and the IDF, several security sources claim. The Lebanese group earlier this year ordered thousands of pagers to conduct communications after leader Hassan Nasrallah declared smartphones would be more susceptible to cyber attacks by Israeli forces. Israeli military and intelligence personnel managed to access 5,000 pagers ‘at the production level’ and insert a small amount of high explosives months before they were imported to Lebanon, according to several security sources who spoke to Reuters.
‘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,’ a Lebanese security source said. The source claimed Hezbollah ordered the pagers from a Taiwanese company called Gold Apollo, but executives there said the devices were actually manufactured and sold by BAC Consulting in Budapest, Hungary. Elijah J. Magnier, a Brussels-based senior political risk analyst, later said he spoke with Hezbollah members who had examined pagers that failed to explode.
The pagers appeared to receive a coded error message sent to all the devices that caused them to vibrate and beep for some 10 seconds. When the user pressed the pager’s button to cancel the alert, the explosives were detonated – a design that would ensure the pager was being held by the user at the time of the blast to inflict maximum damage. The months-long operation by Mossad and the IDF represents an unprecedented security breach for Hezbollah, which vowed to exact revenge on Israel and continue its support for ally Hamas amid the ongoing war in Gaza.
‘The resistance will continue today, like any other day, its operations to support Gaza, its people and its resistance which is a separate path from the harsh punishment that the criminal enemy (Israel) should await in response to Tuesday’s massacre,’ a statement read. A U.S. security official today said that the attack was planned for a later date as part of an ‘all-out offensive’ against Hezbollah, but Israel chose to detonate the devices early amid concerns the Lebanese group had become aware of the plan. ‘It was a use it or lose it moment,’ the source told Axios on condition of anonymity.
The string of detonations, which began around 3:30pm local time yesterday and continued for roughly an hour, gave way to widespread panic and chaos across Beirut ‘s southern suburbs, southern Lebanon and even in neighbouring Syria. Shocking video footage showed how unsuspecting targets reached for their pagers, only to be blown off their feet by an unexpected and violent explosion. Victims were seen writhing in agony with hideous injuries to their faces, abdomens and even their groins in harrowing images and videos shared to social media and published on Lebanese networks.
Among the nine people reportedly killed were two girls, aged eight and ten, and several Hezbollah fighters, as well as the son of a Lebanese MP. Iran later confirmed its ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, sustained injuries to his face and hand. More than 2,800 people were ultimately injured in the blasts, 300 of whom were rushed to hospital in critical condition. Early speculation in the wake of the blasts suggested an Israeli hack could have overloaded the lithium ion batteries powering the pagers, which can burn up to 590 degrees celsius (1,100 F) when ignited.
It is possible that Israeli forces or some other actor could have hacked these devices and remotely overcharged the battery, triggering a thermal runaway. But a slew of security sources and experts have since determined the detonations were caused by an Israeli operation that disrupted the supply chain and inserted explosives into the pagers that were subsequently remotely activated by the coded error message. A former British Army bomb disposal officer explained that an explosive device has five main components: A container, a battery, a triggering device, a detonator and an explosive charge. ‘A pager has three of those already,’ explained the ex-officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he now works as a consultant with clients on the Middle East. ‘You would only need to add the detonator and the charge.’
By the time of the attack, ‘the battery was probably half-explosive and half-actual battery,’ said Carlos Perez, director of security intelligence at TrustedSec. Security camera footage shared to social media yesterday appeared to show the moment on Israel sent out its deadly message. A Hezbollah member was seen confusedly lifting his shirt up at a supermarket after his pager, concealed just above his hip, began beeping and lighting up. The device suddenly exploded, crumpling him to the floor as supermarket workers and fellow shoppers panicked and fled.
‘Looking at the video, the size of the detonation is similar to that caused by an electric detonator alone or one that incorporates an extremely small, high-explosive charge,’ said Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordinance disposal expert. This signals involvement of a state actor, Moorhouse said. He added that Israel ‘s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, is the most obvious suspect to have the resources to carry out such an attack. A Hezbollah statement said: ‘After examining all the facts, current data, and available information about the sinful attack that took place this afternoon , we hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression that targeted civilians too.’ Israel has declined to comment on the explosions.
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