According to the latest reports, at least 30 people were killed and 4000 injured, many seriously, when portable pagers used by Hezbollah members and many Lebanese civilians exploded simultaneously in Lebanon on September 17.
Acting Prime Minister Najib Mikati and government ministers were informed about the new bloody crime of the Israeli military during a cabinet meeting. Mikati ordered Health Minister Firass Abiad to leave the meeting and mobilise medical services. Abiad later released a statement saying that 12 people were killed and 2,800 others were injured, including 200 in critical condition. However, as of 19 September, the death toll was already more than 30 and the injured more than 4,000. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was among the injured when his pager exploded, Mehr news agency reported.
The communication devices exploded while in the hands or pockets of their owners, causing many to writhe on the ground in agony. Surveillance cameras in shops and on the streets showed Lebanese injured while walking, standing or sitting. A camera in a supermarket captured the moment when a man approached the cashier and a device exploded. There have been calls for blood donations and the Ministry of Health has ordered hospitals to ensure that emergency departments are ready.
Hospitals in the south were filled to capacity and the wounded were transported to Sidon (Saida) and Beirut. Many of those who sought help arrived in civilian cars or motorcycles. In an initial statement, the Lebanese Internal Security Forces called on the Lebanese to keep the roads clear so that the wounded could be taken to hospital.
Pagers in the service of Hezbollah
Hezbollah turned to old wireless devices, or pagers, equipped with lithium batteries after Israel attacked and killed a number of its leaders and members by hacking mobile phones and cameras connected to the Internet.
A pager is a small, easy-to-carry automatic device used to receive short messages. Hezbollah adopted it because it was considered impossible to track.
Taiwanese Gold Apollo did not produce the pagers that were used in the explosions in Lebanon, company founder Hsu Ching-kuang told reporters. Images of destroyed pagers analysed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that matched pagers produced by Gold Apollo. However, it was stated that the pagers used in the explosion were manufactured by a company in Europe that had the right to use the brand of a Taiwanese company. A senior Lebanese security source identified a photo of a model of the AP924 pager, which, like other pagers, wirelessly receives and displays text messages, but cannot make phone calls.
The Israeli Mossad planted a small number of explosives in 5,000 Taiwanese-made pagers ordered by the Lebanese and Hezbollah a few months before the bombings, a senior Lebanese security source told Reuters. He also said that the devices were modified by Mossad specialists “at the production level”. “Mossad embedded an explosive charge into the device, which receives a code. It is very difficult to detect by any means. Even with any device or scanner”. He also stated that 3,000 pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them, simultaneously setting off explosives. Another security source told Reuters that up to three grams of explosives were hidden in the new pagers and, for the time being, Hezbollah quietly used them for months.
Some past Israeli crimes
Israel rarely claims responsibility for such attacks and its military has declined to comment. However, the country has a long history of conducting complex remote operations, ranging from sophisticated cyber attacks to remotely controlled machine guns aimed at leaders in drive-by shootings, suicide drone attacks and explosions at secret underground Iranian nuclear facilities.
Here are just some of them: in July, 2024, two Arab leaders in Beirut and Tehran were killed in deadly strikes several hours apart from each other. Hamas has said that Israel is behind the assassination of its supreme leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital. Although Israel has not acknowledged its role in the attack, it has claimed responsibility for the deadly strike a few hours earlier on Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s top commander in Beirut. In the same month, Israel launched a massive strike against the ‘shadow’ Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif in the densely populated southern Gaza Strip. According to local health authorities, at least 90 people, including children, were killed in that strike, but the Israeli military was not interested or worried about this and, as they have said, Arab children are future fighters against Israel. In April this year, two Iranian generals were killed in what Iran called an Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Syria. These deaths prompted Iran to launch an unprecedented attack on Israel, which involved about 300 missiles and UAVs.
Some details of the bloody operation
It takes a long time to plan an attack of this magnitude. The exact details are still unknown, but experts interviewed by Associated Press (AP) have shared estimates ranging from a few months to two years. The sophistication of the attack suggests that the perpetrators have been gathering intelligence for a long time, said Nicholas Reese, associate instructor at the Centre for Global Affairs at New York University’s School of Professional Studies. An attack of this calibre requires establishing the connections necessary to gain physical access to the pagers before they are sold, developing technology that will be embedded in the devices and finding sources that can confirm that the pagers were with the targets.
It is likely that these pagers seemed normal to their users for some time before the attack. Elijah J. Magnier, a veteran from Brussels and senior political risk analyst with more than 37 years of experience in the region, said that he had conversations with Hezbollah members and survivors of the pager attack. They said the pagers were purchased more than six months ago. “The pagers have been functioning perfectly for six months”, Magnier said. The cause of the explosion, he added, was a message sent to all devices. Based on his conversations with Hezbollah members, Magnier also said that many pagers did not turn off, which allowed the group to check them. They concluded that 3 to 5 grams of explosives were hidden or embedded in the circuit.
N. R. Jenzen-Jones, an arms expert and the director of the Australian-based Armament Research Service, notes that Israel has been accused of conducting similar operations in the past. In 2023, AP reported that Iran accused Israel of trying to sabotage its ballistic missile programme with faulty foreign parts that could explode, damage or destroy the weapon before it could be used. Jenzen-Jones also adds that “such a large-scale operation also raises questions of targeting”, highlighting the number of related causes and huge consequences that have been reported so far. “How can the party setting off the explosive device be sure that the victim’s child, for example, is not playing with the pager while it is working?” he said. But this did not interest Netanyahu at all, who gave his bloody order to carry out this operation.
Initially, Hezbollah issued a statement confirming that at least two members of the organisation were killed in the explosions. One of them was the son of a Hezbollah member in Parliament. The group later posted announcements that six more members had been killed, although it did not specify how. Among them was an 8-year-old girl. “We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression, which was also directed against civilians”, a Hezbollah spokesman said, adding that Israel “will surely be justly punished”.
Viktor Mikhin, corresponding member of RANS, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
