While Hezbollah aimed to secure itself by switching to pagers, little did it know that Israeli machinations, according to officers and experts, could make even the low-tech devices a deadly tool.
As two waves of explosions in pagers and walkie-talkies across Lebanon killed 37 and injured thousands, security officials have said Israel sketched out the extensive operation, apparently aimed at armed group Hezbollah.
Lebanon’s hospitals were overwhelmed on Tuesday as pagers used by Hezbollah detonated, killing 12 people, including two children, and wounding nearly 3,000 others.
The next day, a second deadly wave of unprecedented explosions in Hezbollah’s strongholds killed at least 25 and injured more than 450 — further stoking tensions with Israel.
On Thursday, Israel bombed southern Lebanon and said it had thwarted an Iranian-led assassination plot.
Lebanese officials told Reuters Israel’s Mossad spy agency planted explosives inside 5,000 pagers imported by Hezbollah months before Tuesday’s detonations. The operation was an unprecedented Hezbollah security breach.
According to The New York Times, some of the dead and wounded were Hezbollah members but others were not, as four children were among those killed.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied any role in the explosions. However, 12 current and former defence and intelligence officials who were briefed on the attack told the NYT that the Israelis were behind it, describing the operation as complex and long in the making.
They spoke to the NYT on the condition of anonymity, given the sensitivity of the subject.
Hezbollah, keeping in view past Israeli attacks using sophisticated technology, became wary of its enemy tracing its members’ locations through cellphone networks. In February, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah urged its members to stop using mobile phones: “Bury it”.
According to NYT, Nasrallah had been pushing his group for years to invest in pagers, which, thanks to their limited capabilities, would not give away a user’s location.
Time was of the essence. NYT reported that even before Nasrallah decided to expand pager usage, Israel had put into motion a plan to establish a shell company that would pose as an international pager producer — BAC Consulting.
Shipments of the pagers to Lebanon increased over the summer, with thousands being distributed among Hezbollah officers and their allies, two American intelligence officials told NYT.
Israeli intelligence officers referred to the pagers as “buttons” that could be pushed when the time seemed ripe, the report stated.
On Tuesday, Israeli officers finally issued orders to activate the pagers.
According to three intelligence and defence officials quoted by NYT, to set off the explosions, Israel triggered the pagers to beep and sent a message to them in Arabic that appeared as though it had come from Hezbollah’s senior leadership.
Seconds later, Lebanon was thrown into a frenzy as its healthcare system struggled to deal with the piling number of injured people — ranging from people in markets and cafes to men riding motorcycles.
According to the Associated Press, the explosions caused indiscriminate casualties as hundreds of blasts went off wherever the pagers’ holders happened to be — in homes, cars, grocery stores, and cafes, often with family or bystanders nearby.
One such victim was nine-year-old Fatima Abdullah who was holding her father’s beeping pager when it exploded, killing her, the NYT said.
Booby traps are banned under international law, AP states. “Weaponising an object used by civilians is strictly prohibited,” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of law and international peace studies at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
AP quoted an American official as saying that Israel briefed the United States on Tuesday after the conclusion of the operation, in which small amounts of explosives secreted in the pagers were detonated.
The pagers’ manufacturer
BAC Consulting — apparently a Hungary-based company under contract to produce the devices on behalf of Taiwanese company Gold Apollo — was actually part of an Israeli front, NYT reported citing three intelligence officers briefed on the operation.
The three officers said at least two other shell companies were created as well to mask the identities of the Israeli intelligence officers behind the pager production.
While BAC did make ordinary pagers for usual clients, those for Hezbollah were produced separately. They contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN, the three intelligence officers told NYT.
The pagers began shipping to Lebanon in the summer of 2022 in small numbers, but production was quickly ramped up after Nasrallah denounced cellphones, the report added.
A BBC report also states that BAC’s company records reveal it was first incorporated in 2022.
A Hezbollah official told AP that the pagers were a new brand, but refused to specify how long the group had been using them.
However, the two firms accused of manufacturing the pagers have denied responsibility.
According to AP, Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs said that it had no records of direct exports of Gold Apollo pagers to Lebanon and a Hungarian government spokesman stated the pager devices had never been in Hungary either, noting that BAC had merely acted as an intermediary.
Who made the walkie-talkies?
Meanwhile, images of the walkie-talkies from Wednesday’s blasts examined by Reuters showed an inside panel labelled “ICOM” — a Japanese company — and “made in Japan”.
The walkie-talkies were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, around the same time as the pagers, Reuters quoted a security source as saying.
However, BBC quoted Icom as saying it stopped producing the IC-V82 model of a hand-held radio 10 years ago and that the manufacturing of the batteries has also stopped.
The company said it was not possible to confirm whether the IC-V82s that exploded in yesterday’s attacks were shipped directly from Icom, or via a distributor.
A sales executive at the US subsidiary of Icom told AP that the exploded radio devices in Lebanon appear to be a knock-off product and not made by the Japanese firm.
Experts say supply-chain interference likely
Tuesday’s pager explosions were most likely the result of supply-chain interference, several experts told AP.
They explained that very small explosive devices may have been built into the pagers before they were delivered to Hezbollah, and then all remotely triggered simultaneously, possibly with a radio signal.
The details corroborate information shared by a US official with AP.
A former British Army bomb disposal officer highlighted that a pager had three of the five main components in an explosive device — a container, a battery, and a triggering device present already while a detonator and an explosive charge were needed.
Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordinance disposal expert, said Israel’s foreign intelligence agency Mossad was the most obvious suspect to have the resources to carry out such an attack.
Header image: People gather as smoke rises from a mobile shop in Sidon, Lebanon on Sept 18, 2024. — Reuters
