1 day Ago By News Desk
Israel’s use of advanced technology in attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon has claimed nine lives and more than 3,000 injured, including Hezbollah’s fighters and Iran’s envoy to Beirut. Almost 5000 pagers in possession of Hezbollah members in different areas of Lebanon exploded simultaneously. Reuters reported that Israel’s spy agency Mosad planted explosives inside the pagers imported by the Lebanese fighter group Hezbollah before Tuesday’s explosions.
Nine people, including a child, were martyred in pager blasts, while more than 2,500 were injured, 200 of them are in critical condition, as per Lebanon’s Ministry of Health. Several Hezbollah fighters were also injured by explosions in pager devices used for communication. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, has also severely been injured as a result of pager blasts, losing one eye while the other one is injured.
Media reports suggest that explosions in pager devices took place in southern Lebanon and the suburbs of Beirut. Wounded members of Hezbollah have been taken to the hospital, many of them in critical condition. In the videos that have surfaced it can be seen that the hospitals are filled with the wounded.
Most of the injured have wounds on their hands, feet, faces, stomachs and eyes. The detonation of the pagers is being termed the biggest security breach since the genocide in Gaza began on October 7. The series of explosions in pagers started at 3:45 pm and continued for about an hour.
There were explosions in several wireless communication devices across Lebanon, as a result of which many people were injured, says a statement issued by the security forces of Lebanon. Reuters report that the pagers in which the blasts took place were modern models that had been purchased in recent months from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, but the company said in a statement it did not manufacture the devices. It said they were made by a company called BAC which has a licence to use its brand, but gave no more details.
“The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it,” Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang told reporters at the company’s offices in the northern Taiwanese city of New Taipei on Wednesday. “For Israel to embed an explosive trigger within the new batch of pagers, they would have likely needed access to the supply chain of these devices,” Brussels-based military and security analyst Elijah Magnier told AFP.
“Israeli intelligence has infiltrated the production process, adding an explosive component and remote triggering mechanism into the pagers without raising suspicion,” he said, raising the prospect the third party which sold the devices could have been an “intelligence front” set up by Israel for the purpose. An investigation has been launched by Lebanon to determine whether the pagers arrived in Lebanon directly from Taiwan or were imported to Lebanon from a third country. Hezbollah has directly blamed Israel for the pager blasts.
Lebanese media claim that the pager explosions happened after the devices were hacked by Israel. Eyewitness account shared that the pagers first got extremely hot and then exploded. Pager was the most popular messaging device used around the world till the last century.
It is a wireless device that transmits messages through electronic waves, through which written and voice messages can be sent. Invented in the 50s and 60s of the 20th century, this device saw its rise in the 80s. However, it is still used by emergency services and security agencies in most countries because modern pagers are considered more secure than mobile phones.
An investigative report by Turkish media said that the pager sends messages on sophisticated systems, but hacking is possible. Pagers operate on radio frequency and the radio frequency can be controlled remotely. The local media claims that the pager contained less than 20 grams of explosives which were detonated through calls and messages.
Mossad had infiltrated the pagers’ supply chain. Lebanon’s Hezbollah said Wednesday it “will continue, as in all the past days, its blessed operations to support Gaza”, after a deadly wave of exploding pagers the Iran-backed militant group blamed on Israel. “This path is ongoing and separate from the difficult reckoning that the criminal enemy must await for its massacre on Tuesday,” the group said in a statement issued on Telegram.
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