Hezbollah pager explosions: How Israel could have ‘orchestrated’ the sophisticated attacks

At first, it seemed like a freak accident. A pager exploding. But soon hundreds of handheld devices started detonating all across Lebanon. It was an attack, targeting the Hezbollah.

At least nine people have been killed and more than 2,800 injured in the pager attacks on Tuesday. According to the health ministry, at least 200 of those injured are critical.

Hezbollah has blamed Israel for the explosions. However, the Jewish nation has yet to comment.

We explain what happened in Lebanon and how such a widespread attack was planned.

How did the pager explosions start? What happened?

Pagers used by Hezbollah fighters started detonating around 3.30 pm local time in the southern suburbs of Beirut known as Dahiyeh and the eastern Bekaa valley, strongholds of the anti-Israel militant group. The explosions lasted for an hour.

More from Explainers

Resuming flights, visas and more… Are India and China inching towards an all-out thaw? History Today: When construction on the Berlin Wall began in 1961

Some of the pagers blasted after the devices rang, causing serious injuries as the fighters reached out for them or brought them close to their faces to check the screens.

According to footage reviewed by Reuters, the blasts were contained. They appeared to wound the person using the pager or close to it. Video from hospitals and shared on social media showed individuals with injuries to their faces, missing fingers and gaping wounds at the hip where the device was likely worn.

The attack left at least nine people dead including an eight-year-old and a Hezbollah MP’s son. Among the thousands injured was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani.

Editor’s Picks

1

Pager explosions in Lebanon: Why Hezbollah still uses pagers in the age of smartphones 2

10-year-old girl, Hezbollah MP's son killed: The victims of pager blasts in Lebanon

Who is behind the pager explosions?

It’s unclear who is behind the highly sophisticated attack and no one has claimed responsibility yet. However, Lebanon and Hezbollah have blamed Israel for it.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the explosions represented a “serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty and a crime by all standards”.

Accusing Israel, Hezbollah said it held the country “fully responsible for this criminal aggression that also targeted civilians”. “This treacherous and criminal enemy will certainly receive its just punishment for this sinful aggression, whether it expects it or not,” it added.

Israeli officials have not commented on the allegations but most experts and analysts agree that the Jewish nation had a role to play.

Professor Simon Mabon, chair of International Relations at Lancaster University, told the BBC, “We know that Israel has a precedent of using technology to track its target” but he went on to call the scale of this attack “unprecedented”.

Dubai-based analyst Riad Kahwaji said that Israel had taken advantage of Hezbollah’s move away from smartphones to pagers. Israel intelligence had conducted a “most professional operation,” he told AFP. “Without a doubt, one of the factories it (Israel) owns manufactured and shipped these explosive devices that exploded today.”

How was the attack carried out?

Hezbollah prefers to use pagers for internal communications over smartphones for security reasons. And Israel appears to have tapped in on this weakness.

A source close to the militant group, asking not to be identified, told AFP that “the pagers that exploded concern a shipment recently imported by Hezbollah of 1,000 devices”, which appear to have been “sabotaged at source”.

According to analysts, Israel likely had corrupted the devices before delivery, allowing them to explode at a specific time. The attack was reportedly a joint operation between the Israeli military and the Israeli intelligence unit, Mossad.

A report in The New York Times (NYT) reveals that Israel hid explosive material within a new batch of Taiwanese-made pagers imported to Lebanon. The pagers ordered from Gold Apollo in Taiwan were tampered with beforehand, officials were quoted as saying by the publication.

A senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters that Mossad planted small explosives inside the devices months before Tuesday’s detonations.

“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. The pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them, simultaneously activating the explosives.

Another security source told Reuters that up to three grammes of explosives were hidden in the new pagers and had gone “undetected” by Hezbollah for months. However, a report in NYT claims that one or two ounces (28 to 56 grammes) were planted in each device.

According to a former British Army bomb disposal, 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 to Fortune on condition of anonymity because he works as a consultant with clients in West Asia. “You would only need to add the detonator and the charge.”

But how would Israel get access to the pagers beforehand? “For Israel to embed an explosive trigger within the new batch of pagers, they would have likely needed access to the supply chain of these devices,” Brussels-based military and security analyst Elijah Magnier told AFP.

“Israeli intelligence has infiltrated the production process, adding an explosive component and remote triggering mechanism into the pagers without raising suspicion,” he added, raising the prospect the third party which sold the devices could have been an “intelligence front” set up by Israel for the purpose.

Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute said, “This was more than lithium batteries being forced into override. A small plastic explosive was almost certainly concealed alongside the battery, for remote detonation via a call or page.” He concluded that Mossad had infiltrated the supply chain.

Where did the pagers come from?

Five thousand Taiwan-made pagers were ordered by Hezbollah recently, according to a Lebanese security source.

The devices are made by Gold Apollo and most were the AP924 model. Three other Gold Apollo models were also part of the shipment.

The Taiwanese company is now under the scanner. However, Gold Apollo’s founder said the company did not make the pagers used in the explosions in Lebanon. They were manufactured by a company in Europe that had the right to use the Taiwanese firm’s brand.

Why would Israel target Hezbollah?

Hezbollah is an ally of Iran, Israel’s arch-nemesis. The militant group, which is part of Iran’s Axis of Resistance, has been engaged in a conflict with Israel for months. There have been frequent exchanges of rocket and missile fire across the northern border of the Jewish nation. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced from towns and villages on both sides of the border by near-daily exchanges of fire between Israeli forces and the Lebanese Hezbollah.

Tuesday’s attack came on the same day that Israel vowed the safe return of its citizens to their homes near the border with Lebanon to its formal war goals. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he laid out the war aim in an overnight security Cabinet meeting.

The two sides have avoided a full-blown war. However, now Hezbollah has warned of retaliation and there is a possibility that tensions could escalate.

With inputs from agencies