Israel planted explosives in Hezbollah's pagers before Lebabon blasts: Report
In what appears to be a targeted strike, wireless communication devices used by militant group Hezbollah exploded in Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least nine people and injuring 2,750 others. Senior Lebanese security sources have now claimed that Israel's Mossad spy agency planted small amounts of explosives inside 5,000 Taiwan-made pagers ordered by Hezbollah months before Tuesday's detonations.
Pagers made by European company, not Gold Apollo
However, the pagers used in the operation were not produced by Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, as initially believed. According to Gold Apollo's founder Hsu Ching-Kuang, the devices were manufactured by a European company authorized to use their brand. Hsu clarified, "The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it," without revealing the name of the actual manufacturer.
Mossad's modification: Explosives injected at production level
Hezbollah fighters have been using pagers as a low-tech communication tool to avoid Israeli location-tracking. But the devices were modified by Mossad "at the production level," according to a senior Lebanese security source. The source told 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."
Coded message triggers explosions, Hezbollah reels from attack
A coded message sent to the pagers triggered the explosives, causing 3,000 of the devices to detonate simultaneously. Each pager contained up to three grams of explosives that had gone undetected by Hezbollah for months, a security source revealed. The aftermath left Hezbollah in shock with fighters and others injured or dead. An anonymous official described it as the group's "biggest security breach" since the Gaza conflict erupted on October 7.
Detonations claim 9 lives, wound thousands
Among those affected by Tuesday's blasts were Hezbollah fighters and Iran's envoy to Beirut. In response to this incident, the Iran-backed Hezbollah has pledged retaliation against Israel. Jonathan Panikoff, the US government's former deputy national intelligence officer on the Middle East, described the incident as "the biggest counterintelligence failure that Hezbollah has had in decades."
Hezbollah's counterintelligence failure: A major setback
In February, Hezbollah had drawn up a war plan to address gaps in its intelligence infrastructure following targeted Israeli strikes that killed around 170 fighters, including a senior commander and a top Hamas official in Beirut. To evade Israeli spies, Hezbollah's Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah had warned supporters that their phones were more dangerous than Israeli spies, advising them to break, bury or lock them in an iron box. As a result, the group distributed pagers across its various branches .
