BEIRUT, Sept 18 (Askume) – Israel’s Mossad spy agency planted 5,000 pagers imported by Lebanon’s Hezbollah months before Tuesday’s blast, a top Lebanese security source and another source told Askume.
The operation was an unprecedented security breach for Hezbollah, in which thousands of pager bombs were launched across Lebanon, killing nine people and wounding nearly 3,000, including the group’s fighters and Iran’s envoy to Beirut.
Lebanese security sources said the pagers came from Taiwan’s Gold Apollo, but the company said in a statement it does not produce the devices. They are said to be made by a company called BAC, which has a license to use its brand, but no further details were given.
Iran-backed Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, though the Israeli military declined to comment on the bombing.
Hezbollah said in a statement on Wednesday that “today’s resistance activities will continue as on other days, and its actions will continue to support Gaza, its people and the resistance movement, independent of the severe punishment meted out to criminal enemies.” (Israel) should wait to respond to Tuesday’s massacre.
Multiple sources told Askume the plot appeared to have been underway for months.
A senior Lebanese security source said the group had ordered 5,000 pagers from Gold Apollo, and multiple sources said the pagers were brought into the country earlier this year.
Golden Apollo founder Xu Jingguang said the pager used in the blast was made by a European company that has the right to use the company’s brand, but he could not immediately confirm the brand’s name. The company confirmed BAC as the company in a statement, but Hsu declined to comment on its location.
“This product is not ours. It just has our brand on it,” Hsu told reporters at the company’s office in the northern Taiwanese city of New Taipei on Wednesday.
Senior Lebanese security sources confirmed photographs of the pager, model AP924, which, like other pagers, can receive and display text messages wirelessly but cannot make calls.
Gold Apollo said in a statement that the AR-924 model is manufactured and sold by BAC.
“We only provide brand trademark authorization and are not involved in the design or manufacturing of the product,” the statement said.
Two sources familiar with the group’s activities told Askume this year that Hezbollah militants are using pagers as a low-tech means of communication to evade Israeli location tracking.
But senior Lebanese sources said the devices had been modified “at the production stage” by Israeli spy services.
“Mossad placed a plate containing explosive material inside the device, which provided the code. It is very difficult to detect it by any means, not even by any device or scanner,” the source said.
Sources said that when a coded message was sent to 3,000 pagers, the pagers exploded and detonated the explosives.
Another security source told Askume the new pager contained up to three grams of explosives and was unknown to Hezbollah for months.
Xu said he did not know how the pager exploded.
Israeli officials did not immediately respond to a Askume request for comment.
Photos of the destroyed pagers analysed by Askume showed that the format of the pagers and the sticker on the back matched those made by Gold Apollo.
Hezbollah was rattled by the attack, which left militants and others bleeding, hospitalized or killed. An unnamed Hezbollah official said the blast was the group’s “biggest security breach” since the October 7 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah’s ally Hamas in Gaza.
Jonathan Panikoff, the US government’s deputy national intelligence officer for the Middle East, said “This would be Hezbollah’s biggest counterintelligence failure in decades.”
Break out your phone, place a group order
In February, Hezbollah developed a battle plan aimed at addressing gaps in the group’s intelligence structure. Israeli strikes on Lebanon have killed about 170 militants, including a senior commander in Beirut and a senior Hamas official.
In a televised address on February 13, the group’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, issued a stern warning to his supporters that their cellphones were more dangerous than Israeli spies. He said they should smash, bury or lock the phones in a metal box.
Instead, the group has opted to distribute pagers to members of Hezbollah’s various branches – from fighters to medical personnel in the rescue zone.
Hospital footage reviewed by Askume showed several Hezbollah members injured in the blast. The injured man had multiple cuts on his face, missing fingers and deep wounds on his buttocks. He was possibly wearing a pager.
“We have been hit very badly,” said a senior Lebanese security source with direct knowledge of the group’s investigation into the bombing.
The pager bombing comes amid growing concerns about tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, which have been engaged in a cross-border war since the Gaza conflict began last October.
While the war in Gaza has been Israel’s main focus since Hamas-led gunmen launched an attack on Israel on October 7, the dangerous situation on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon has raised concerns that the regional conflict could mobilise a coalition of states, with Iran drawn into its fold.
The latest phase of the conflict began the next day (7 October) with a missile attack by Hezbollah, followed by daily exchanges of rocket, artillery and missile fire, as Israeli warplanes launched attacks deep into Lebanese territory.
Hezbollah says it does not want a full-scale war but would fight if Israel started one.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant told US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Monday that the window for a diplomatic solution to the standoff with the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement in southern Lebanon is closing.
Still, experts said they did not believe the pager blasts were a sign of an imminent Israeli ground attack.
Rather, this is an indication that the Israeli intelligence agency has penetrated deep into Hezbollah.
Paul Pillar, a 28-year veteran of the US intelligence community, primarily the CIA, said: “This shows Israel’s ability to penetrate deep into the enemy’s interior in a very dramatic way.”
