Jerusalem: Israel’s Mossad spy agency embedded a small quantity of explosives in 5,000 pagers manufactured in Taiwan, which were ordered by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, five months prior to the detonations on Tuesday.
Thousands of pagers, wireless communication devices carried by members of the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, detonated simultaneously across Lebanon and parts of Syria on Tuesday. The explosions killed at least nine individuals and injured many others. In Syria, close to 100 instances of blasts were reported.
A senior Lebanese security official, speaking to Reuters, claimed that the pagers were rigged to explode upon receiving a coded message, triggering the explosives at the same time.
An Iran-supported militant group reportedly ordered 5,000 pagers from the Taiwan-based company Gold Apollo, which were clandestinely brought into the country around April and May. A security source pinpointed the model of an exploded pager as the AP924 variant. Furthermore, photographs of the wrecked pagers displayed a design and stickers on the reverse side, matching the production style of Gold Apollo.
According to sources, the scheme seems to have been in development for several months. Sky News Arabia was told by sources that the Israeli intelligence agency embedded a quantity of PETN, a potent explosive, within the batteries of the devices and remotely detonated them by increasing the battery temperature.
Additionally, security sources reported to the Qatar-funded Al Jazeera channel that the explosive’s weight in each device was less than 20 grams, and the pagers that exploded had been imported five months prior.
An investigation is underway to determine the activation method of the explosive charge, the source reported. In response, Hezbollah has promised retaliation against Israel, accusing it of triggering pager explosions throughout Lebanon on Tuesday. The Iran-supported militia group declared that Israel would face “appropriate retribution” for the explosions.
Israeli authorities and the military have not issued comments on the explosions and the ensuing accusations. Hezbollah militants have resorted to using pagers, a low-tech method of communication, to avoid Israeli tracking. The organization has been engaged in an armed conflict with Israel following the attack by Hamas on October 7.
Israel has reportedly employed similar methods previously. A former US National Security Agency intelligence analyst, David Kennedy, claimed that Israel had supposedly embedded 15 grams of RDX explosive in a mobile phone to assassinate Hamas leader Yahya Ayyash in 1996. The explosive was triggered during a phone call to his father, with Israel’s intelligence agency Shin Bet implicated in the act.
