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At least 12 people – including two children – have been killed and thousands wounded after electronic pagers belonging to Hezbollah simultaneously exploded in Lebanon and Syria.
The majority of the explosions took place in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. Additional explosions were recorded in the Syrian capital of Damascus, where Hezbollah members are based.
On Wednesday, more explosions have been heard in Beirut and other cities with reports walkie-talkie devices had been detonated.
Tuesday’s blasts began in Beirut about 3.30pm local time. Witnesses reported seeing smoke coming from people's pockets, before seeing small explosions that sounded like fireworks. In one clip, CCTV footage appeared to show an explosion in a man’s trouser pocket as he stood at a shop till. The explosions continued for around an hour, with people starting to pour into hospitals. Lebanese Public Health Minister Firass Abiad said damage to the hands and face made up the majority of injuries.
Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and allied to Hamas, controls southern Lebanon, where they have been exchanging rocket fire with Israel across the border for nearly a year, connected to the war in Gaza.
That was triggered when Hamas launched a bloody act of terror in Israel on 7 October, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages into Gaza, which is run by Hamas.
A day later, after Israel began its aerial and later ground attack in the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians according to the local health ministry, Hezbollah began firing into northern Israel. They have vowed not to stop firing rockets until Israel ends its war in Gaza.
The explosions of hundreds, if not thousands of electronic pagers used by Hezbollah to communicate to one another could spell the latest iteration of this ongoing conflict. It also threatens to escalate the conflict yet again.
Who is responsible?
Both Hezbollah and the Lebanese government - they are separate authorities - quickly blamed Israel for the attack.
The Israeli military, in keeping with its policy of not remarking on attacks outside of its own territory, told The Independent that it is “refraining from commenting”.
After initially releasing a statement saying they were investigating the explosions, Hezbollah issued a second comment saying they held Israel “fully responsible” for the attack, though they provided no evidence to substantiate this claim.
“After examining all the facts, current data, and available information about the sinful attack that took place this afternoon, we hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression that targeted civilians too,” the group said. They vowed to “punish” Israel by way of response.
Lebanon’s foreign ministry condemned what it called an “Israeli cyber attack”. The ministry said in a statement that it is preparing to submit a complaint to the United Nations Security Council.
“This dangerous and deliberate Israeli escalation is accompanied by Israeli threats to expand the scope of the war against Lebanon on a large scale, and by the intransigence of Israeli’s positions calling for more bloodshed, destruction and devastation,” it said.
How has this happened?
Sources claimed to Reuters that Israel's Mossad spy agency planted explosives inside 5,000 pagers imported by Hezbollah.
A senior Lebanese source said the devices had been modified by Israel's spy service "at the production level" – meaning somwhere along the supply chain during manufacture or transit. Attacks using this method to hack software are known, but modifying hardware is rarer, as it will involve a bigger plan to get their hands on all the devices.
"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," the source said.
The source said 3,000 of the pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them, simultaneously activating the explosives.
Another security source told Reuters that up to three grams of explosives were hidden in the new pagers and had gone "undetected" by Hezbollah for months. Another Hezbollah security source added that the new pagers that Hezbollah members were carrying had lithium batteries that apparently exploded.
A Hezbollah official told the Associated Press the pagers were a new brand, but declined to say how long they had been in use – but it is believed they were brought into the Lebanon earlier this year.
Taiwanese company Gold Apollo said it authorised its brand on the pagers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria, but they were manufactured by a company based in Budapest.
The AR-924 pagers were manufactured by BAC Consulting KFT, based in Hungary's capital, according to a statement by Gold Apollo.
It said: "According to the co-operation agreement, we authorise BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in designated regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are solely the responsibility of BAC."
Other Hezbollah officials speculated that the devices may have been contaminated with malware that caused the pagers to overheat and explode.
Independent intelligence analysts have suggested the explosions looked like the type of “sophisticated” operation characteristic of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence services.
Attackers would have needed to know at least the make and models of the individual pagers to do this. That the attacks were coordinated suggests the attackers may have also known the serial numbers of the devices.
However the attack was coordinated, it represents a serious security breach for Hezbollah.
What does this mean for tensions in the area?
Fears that Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip could escalate to a war with Hezbollah in Lebanon have abounded for months.
At various points this year, Hezbollah officials, including top commander Fuad Shukr, were killed by what appeared to be Israeli airstrikes on Beirut and the Iranian embassy in Damascus.
Hezbollah vowed to respond to each attack - and they have done the same with this latest incident. How that could manifest itself is unclear but previous responses have involved firing volleys of rockets and missiles into northern Israel.
The area has been evacuated while these attacks are ongoing but Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday officially included the safe relocation of the displaced civilians back to northern Israel as one of their main war aims.
What does whoever is behind this get out of it?
Most clearly, the assault has significantly destroyed Hezbollah’s communication systems – and will have hit morale given the scale of the security breach. If it is Israel, sowing such confiusion and discord could be a prelude to a wider attack on the Israeli-Lebanon border, although there have been few signs of the required military build-up.
Beyond that, intelligence analysts have suggested that the culprit may be signalling to Hezbollah that it has access to its deliveries, which would be a major setback for the group. It will make Hamas question its entire security apparatus.
On Tuesday, before the cascading expolsions of pagers, Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security service claimed they had foiled a plan by Hezbollah to kill a former Israeli security official by remotely detonating an explosive device from Lebanon. So a case of “whatever you can do, we can do better” may also have been a factor.
What is a pager and why do Hezbollah use them?
Pagers pre-date mobile phones, having been widely used in the 1980s and 1990s. They are a one-way communications device, allowing people to send a short message via radio signal to the pager. Often it would be a number to call back.
Hezbollah has been very cautious with its communications. Previous airstrikes targeting their private meetings have highlighted the strenth of Israeli intelligence.
Aware that mobile phone conversations could easily be hacked and traced, they are likely to have switched to the lo-fi pager alternative to make it harder to be watched by the Israeli intelligence services. The dangers of mobile phones have long been clear to Hezbollah. In 1996, Israel’s assassination of the Hamas bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash was conducted by his phone exploding in his hand.
It is reported that senior Hamas officials, including the group’s leader Yahya Sinwar, who is hiding out in tunnels beneath the Gaza Strip, has resorted to using handwritten notes to communicate with his fellow Hamas personnel for this same reason.
Who has said what about it?
Responses across the world have varied. A source at the British foreign office said they were “monitoring the situation closely”.
“We are particularly concerned by reports of civilian casualties,” they said. The US expressed a similar sentiment, as did the United Nations.
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric described the developments in Lebanon as “extremely concerning”, adding: “We deplore the civilian casualties that we have seen. We cannot underscore enough the risks of escalation in Lebanon and in the region.”
Iranian state-run IRNA news agency said that the country's ambassador, Mojtaba Amani, was superficially wounded by an exploding pager and was being treated at a hospital. Iran‘s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi has strongly condemned what he and other officials also claimed was an Israeli attack. Iran state media reported that Mr Araghchi made the comments in a phone conversation with his Lebanese counterpart, Abdallah Bou Habib.
Hamas issued a statement on the Telegram messenger app saying they “strongly condemned” what they also believed was an Israeli attack.
The Houthis, another Iran-backed militia based in Yemen, described the incident as a “heinous crime and a violation of Lebanese sovereignty”.
“We are certain that Lebanon is capable of facing all challenges, and has a resistance movement capable of deterring [Israel] and making it pay a heavy price for any escalation it may undertake against Lebanon,” spokesperson Mohammed Abdelsalam wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
