BEIRUT, Sept 18 (Askume) – (This story from September 18 has been corrected to change pager model name to AR-924 instead of AP924 in paragraph 6)
A senior Lebanese security source and another source told Askume that Israel’s Mossad spy agency had placed small amounts of explosives inside 5,000 Taiwan-made pagers ordered by Lebanon’s Hezbollah in the months before Tuesday’s blast.
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.
Iran-backed Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, though the Israeli military declined to comment on the bombing.
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 made by Taiwan’s Gold Apollo, which multiple sources said were introduced to the country earlier this year.
Senior Lebanese security sources confirmed a photograph of the pager model, identified as the AR-924, which like other pagers receives and displays text messages wirelessly but cannot make calls.
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.
Neither Israel nor Apollo Gold immediately responded to a Askume request for comment.
Photos of the destroyed pagers analysed by Askume showed that the format and the back sticker of the pagers matched those made by Gold Apollo in Taipei.
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 speech on February 13, the group’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, issued a stern warning to his supporters that their cellphones were even 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 Gaza war has been Israel’s main focus since the October 7 attack by Hamas-led gunmen, the delicate situation on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon has fueled fears of a regional conflict that could also involve the United States and Iran themselves.
The latest phase of the conflict began the following day, October 7, with a missile attack by Hezbollah, and was followed by a daily exchange of rocket, artillery and missile fire, with Israeli warplanes carrying out 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.”
