Beirut:
According to a senior Lebanese security source and additional sources who spoke to Reuters, Israel’s Mossad espionage agency placed a small number of explosives inside 5,000 Taiwan-made pagers that were ordered by the Lebanese organization Hezbollah months prior to Tuesday’s explosions.
Thousands of pagers detonated throughout Lebanon as part of an unparalleled Hezbollah security breach, leaving nine people dead and nearly 3,000 injured, including the group’s fighters and Iran’s representative to Beirut. Iran-supported Hezbollah has sworn to exact revenge on Israel, whose military has refrained from commenting on the explosions.Several sources told Reuters that the scheme seems to have been developed over several months. According to a top security source in Lebanon, the organization had placed an order for 5,000 beepers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, which multiple sources claim was imported into the nation earlier this year.
The pagers used in the explosion, according to Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang, were manufactured in Europe by a company whose name he was unable to quickly verify but which had the legal right to use the trademark of the Taipei-based company. We did not own the product. The only thing that set it apart was our brand,” he said to reporters on Wednesday, declining to identify the manufacturer of the gadgets.
The pager, an AP924, is pictured by the senior Lebanese security source. It is similar to other pagers in that it can wirelessly receive and display text messages but not make phone calls. This year, two people familiar with Hezbollah’s activities told Reuters that the fighters have been attempting to avoid Israeli location-tracking by utilizing pagers as a low-tech form of communication.
According to the senior Lebanese insider, Israel’s intelligence organization altered the devices “at the production level.
Inside the device, the Mossad inserted a board containing explosive material that is coded. It’s quite difficult to find using any method. even with a scanner or other gadget,” the insider stated.
According to the source, 3,000 of the pagers detonated when they received a coded message, setting off the explosives at the same time.Up to three grams of explosives were concealed in the new pagers, according to a second security source who spoke with Reuters. Hezbollah had been “undetected” of the explosives for months.Requests for comment from Reuters were not immediately answered by Gold Apollo or Israel.
Also Read: http://arvind-kejriwal-quits-live-advertisement-2024
Photos of damaged pagers that Reuters examined revealed stickers on the rear and a format that matched pagers manufactured by Taipei-based Gold Apollo.
After the attack, which left fighters and others injured, hospitalized, or killed, Hezbollah was in disarray. Speaking under anonymity, a Hezbollah official described the explosion as the organization’s “biggest security breach” since the October 7 outbreak of hostilities in Gaza between Israel and Hezbollah ally Hamas. According to Jonathan Panikoff, the former deputy national intelligence officer for the U.S. government in the Middle East, “this would easily be the biggest counterintelligence failure that Hezbollah has had in decades.
Group Order: Shatter Your Phones.
Hezbollah created a battle plan in February with the intention of filling in the holes in the organization’s intelligence network. Targeted Israeli bombings on Lebanon had already claimed the lives of some 170 combatants, including a senior commander and a key Hamas official in Beirut.
Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s secretary general, gave a harsh speech to supporters on television on February 13th, telling them that their phones were more hazardous than Israeli spies and that they should smash, bury, or lock them in an iron box.
Rather, they chose to hand out pagers to Hezbollah members in all of its branches, from fighters to medics employed in its relief operations.Numerous Hezbollah members suffered injuries as a result of the explosives, according to hospital video that Reuters examined. The injured guys had gaping wounds at the hip, where the pagers were probably worn, missing fingers, and facial injuries of various degrees.
The senior Lebanese security source, who is directly aware of the group’s investigation into the explosions, stated, “We really got hit hard. Concerns over the rising tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, which have been fighting each other across borders since the Gaza crisis broke out last October, were raised by the pager explosions.The unstable situation along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon has stoked fears of a regional battle that may draw in the United States and Iran, even though the war in Gaza has been Israel’s primary focus since the onslaught on October 7 by militants commanded by Hamas.
