Israel carried out a pager bomb attack that left roughly 2,800 people injured and 12 dead in Lebanon and Syria yesterday fearing that Hezbollah was on the cusp of foiling their deadly plot, a new report has claimed. Pager devices recently introduced by the group to beef up security exploded en masse yesterday, causing chaotic scenes and devastation in Lebanese hospitals. Israel is believed to have orchestrated the attack but has not claimed responsibility. Security sources believe Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, intercepted devices en route to Lebanon months ago and attached explosives to be used when needed to cripple the Iranian proxy group.
Still, questions remain as to why the attack was carried out on Tuesday. One American official told Axios it was ‘a use it or lose it moment’ as Hezbollah were understood to be getting close to uncovering Israeli espionage. Israel’s domestic security agency said only on Tuesday that it had recently foiled a plot by Hezbollah to assassinate a former senior defence official in the coming days. Three US officials told Axios that Israel decided to blow up the pager devices carried by Hezbollah members on Tuesday as they feared the group was close to uncovering their operation.
A security source told Reuters that up to three grams of explosives had been hidden in the new pagers and had gone ‘undetected’ by Hezbollah for months. One senior Lebanese security source told the news agency he believes the devices had been modified by Mossad ‘at the production level’ before arriving in Lebanon. ‘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,’ the source said. Hezbollah 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.
As many as 5,000 devices are believed to have affected, though not all went off on Tuesday, according to the Lebanese source. 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 under licence 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. 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 12 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. 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. 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 February 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.
Initial reports suggested the pagers ordered by Hezbollah were supplied by a Taiwanese company called Gold Apollo. But executives this morning said the company had only authorised its brand on the devices, and that they were manufactured and sold by Hungary’s BAC Consulting KFT. ‘Apollo Gold Corporation has established a long-term private label authorisation and regional agency cooperation with BAC,’ a statement read. ‘According to the agreement, we authorise BAC to use our brand trademark for production sales in specific regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are entirely handled by BAC.’ Gold Apollo chair Hsu Ching-kuang told journalists this morning that his company has had a licensing agreement with BAC for the past three years, but did not provide evidence of the contract. The CEO of BAC Consulting, Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, says on her LinkedIn profile that she has worked as an advisor for various organisations including UNESCO. She was contacted by NBC and confirmed her company worked with Gold Apollo, but added cryptically: ‘I don’t make the pagers. I am just the intermediate. I think you got it wrong,’ before hanging up.
The AR-924 pager ordered by Hezbollah, advertised as being ‘rugged,’ contains a rechargeable lithium battery, according to specifications once advertised on Gold Apollo’s website before it was apparently taken down Tuesday after the sabotage attack. It could receive text messages of up to 100 characters. It also claimed to have up to 85 days of battery life – a crucial factor in Lebanon, where electricity outages have been common as the tiny nation on the Mediterranean Sea has faced years of economic collapse. Yesterday’s shocking incident comes at a time of heightened tensions between Lebanon and Israel. The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Israeli forces have been clashing near-daily for more than 11 months against the backdrop of war between Israel and Hezbollah ally Hamas in Gaza. The clashes have killed hundreds in Lebanon and dozens in Israel and displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the border. On Tuesday, Israel said that halting Hezbollah’s attacks in the north to allow residents to return to their homes is now an official war goal.
Israel has killed Hamas militants in the past with booby trapped cellphones and it’s widely believed to have been behind the Stuxnet computer virus attack on Iran ‘s nuclear program in 2010. The sudden explosions across southern Lebanon Tuesday afternoon came hours after an Israeli strike on Lebanon killed three people, the health ministry said. Israeli forces have traded near-daily fire with the Iran-backed Lebanese group since its ally Hamas launched the October 7 attacks on Israel, triggering the war in Gaza. The health ministry said an ‘Israeli enemy strike’ on the border village of Blida killed ‘three people and wounded two’, without specifying if they were fighters or civilians. Israel’s military said its air force ‘eliminated three terrorists’ from Hezbollah who were at a ‘terrorist infrastructure site’ in the Blida area. Hezbollah did not immediately announce any fighters had been killed, but claimed a series of attacks on Israeli troops and positions near the border on Tuesday.
The NNA reported several Israeli attacks in the south of the country. The latest deaths came hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the political-security cabinet had ‘updated the goals of the war’ to include ‘the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes’. Almost a year of cross-border violence has displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border. Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Monday that ‘military action’ was the ‘only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities’. The violence has killed some 627 people in Lebanon, including at least 141 civilians. On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, authorities have announced the deaths of at least 24 soldiers and 26 civilians. Hezbollah has repeatedly said that only a ceasefire in Gaza will put an end to its attacks, and diplomatic activity in recent months has sought to avert all-out war.
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