Hezbollah militants decided to switch from risky cellphones to old-fashioned pagers only months before the devices suddenly blew up across Lebanon on Tuesday, earlier reporting shows.
Wireless pagers used by Iran-backed Hezbollah members mysteriously detonated around Lebanon, killing at least eight people and injuring nearly 3,000 more, including scores of militants, per local estimates.
Hezbollah and Lebanon have both blamed Israel for the carnage, which has not claimed responsibility. A US State Department spokesperson said Washington was not involved in the exploding pager incident and was unaware of any attack in advance.
Though there is speculation, at this moment, it is unclear exactly how the handheld communication devices all detonated in such a sophisticated and coordinated way. It’s also unclear how many pagers exploded.
Some experts and analysts theorized that the pagers may have been tampered with a while ago, implanted with explosives, and programmed to detonate upon receiving a specific message. Another possibility is a cyberattack on their batteries that caused them to overheat and explode.
Photo by Marwan Naamani/picture alliance via Getty Images
Hezbollah relies heavily on pagers to communicate, but that was not always the case. According to a July Reuters report citing multiple sources familiar with the group, in response to the losses of multiple commanders, the militants switched from using mobile phones, which are less secure for combat purposes, to older methods of communication like pagers to try and stay ahead of Israel’s highly capable intelligence apparatus.
The concern that cellphones are vulnerable and can be used to track an individual’s movement extends beyond the Middle East. Such tactics have led to deadly strikes in the Ukraine war, for instance. This trend has the US military paying close attention to the potential threats that personal devices can bring.
Lebanese security services told Reuters on Tuesday that the pagers were new models acquired by Hezbollah in recent months.
Israel and Hezbollah have repeatedly traded fire in cross-border strikes since Hamas’ October 7 massacre. The deadly fighting between these two bitter foes has displaced tens of thousands of people in northern Israel and southern Lebanon.
Tuesday’s pager incident came just hours after Israel indicated, without specificity, that it would increase military pressure on Hezbollah to allow those who have been displaced to return home.
“The Security Cabinet has updated the objectives of the war to include the following: Returning the residents of the north securely to their homes,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement early Tuesday morning local time.
“Israel will continue to act to implement this objective,” it added.
Despite long-standing concerns of escalation, Israel and Hezbollah have managed to avoid a wider confrontation. However, the pager explosions have reignited fears that the two enemies could descend deeper into an all-out conflict.
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