On Tuesday, thousands of pagers turned into instruments of dilapidation in an attack against Hezbollah. Israeli operatives had fixed explosives in these pagers, which were fixed for Hezbollah’s communication network. The devices received a routine message, they exploded, causing the deaths of at least 11 people and injuring over 2,800 across Lebanon.
Taiwan-based Gold Apollo manufactured the pagers, initially fixed for low-tech communication among Hezbollah fighters, who discovered to avoid detection from advanced tracking systems. However, Israeli intelligence agents somehow managed to fix explosive components into these devices at the production stage. Under the guise of standard equipment, the pagers were then distributed to Hezbollah.
Israel’s Mossad modified these devices and were fixed with a small amount of explosives, according to the media reports. The modification comprised of a remote-trigger process that was activated by a message received on the pagers. The pagers received a coded message on Tuesday which appeared to be from Hezbollah’s leadership.
The message triggered the hidden explosives within the devices instead of conveying instructions. The detonation led to widespread destruction, impacting not only Hezbollah members but also Iran’s envoy to Beirut. Despite months of use, the explosives concealed within the pagers, went undetected. Senior Lebanese security revealed the details of the attack, described the explosives as difficult to find with scanning methods.
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Hezbollah has promised retaliation against Israel. In the recent years, the scale of the operation has been described as one of the most important intelligence failures for Hezbollah. Jonathan Panikoff, a former US national intelligence officer on the Middle East, termed it as the largest counterintelligence failure Hezbollah has faced in decades.
Following the attack, Hezbollah has vowed retaliation against the Israel, terming the incident as Israeli aggression. Ziad Makary, Lebanese information minister condemned the attacks, while a Hezbollah official said, ‘Israel will receive its fair punishment for the blasts’. ‘Among the casualties were its fighters and civilians’, confirmed the group. Senior Hezbollah official Hussein Khalil said, ‘This is not a security targeting of one, two or three people. This is a targeting of an entire nation’. The United States refused any involvement in the explosions in Lebanon.
During a press briefing, the state-department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that ‘Presently, US is gathering information about the incident but was unaware of it beforehand and played no role in it’. Miller said, ‘We are gathering information on this incident. I can assure you that the US was not involved and had no prior knowledge’.
He said, ‘We continue to collect the information and I don’t have any public readout. We are collecting information in the same way that journalists do across the world to collect the facts about what might have happened’.
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