BEIRUT, Sept 18 (Askume) – A Taiwanese pager maker denied on Wednesday that an explosion of one of its devices injured thousands of Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon, in a daring attack that raised fears of an all-out war between the Iran-backed group and the country’s most likely target.
Gold Apollo said the devices were manufactured under license by a company called BAC (headquartered in Budapest, Hungary).
Israel’s spy agency Mossad, which has long carried out sophisticated attacks on foreign soil, was among the pagers imported by Hezbollah in the months before Tuesday’s blast, a senior Lebanese security source and another source who planted the explosives told Askume.
Lebanon’s Health Minister Firas Abiad said on Wednesday that the death toll had risen to 12, including two children. Nearly 3,000 people were injured in the attack, including several of the group’s militants and Iran’s ambassador to Beirut.
Iran-backed Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel and the Israeli military has declined to comment on the bombing. The two countries have been engaged in a cross-border war since the Gaza conflict began last October , raising concerns that the wider Middle East conflict could affect the United States and Iran.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi accused Israel of pursuing a dangerous escalation on multiple fronts that would push the Middle East to the brink of a regional war.
“Hezbollah wants to avoid all-out war. But given the scale and impact on families and civilians, it still wants to avoid all-out war,” said Mohanad Haq Ali of the Carnegie Center on the Middle East. There will be pressure to take strong retaliatory measures.
Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful proxy in the Middle East, said in a statement it would continue to support Hamas in Gaza and that Israel should await a response to the “massacre” it described as “deadly”, which left militants and others bleeding, hospitalised or dying.
A Hezbollah official said the explosion was the “biggest security breach” in the group’s history.
Hospital video seen by Askume showed the man had multiple injuries to his body, including some on his face, some fingers missing and a deep wound on his buttocks, possibly where he was wearing a pager.
Several sources told Askume that the plot appeared to have been in the works for months, since the Gaza war began .There have been a series of assassinations of Hezbollah and Hamas commanders and leaders that have been blamed on Israel.
The way to Budapest
Senior Lebanese security sources said the group had ordered 5,000 pagers from Gold Apollo, and several sources said the pagers were brought into the country earlier this year.
Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-kuang said the pager used in the explosion was manufactured by a European company , which Gold Apollo named as BAC in its statement.
“The 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.
The designated address of BAC Consulting in Budapest, the capital of Hungary, is a peach-colored building on a predominantly residential street in the outer suburbs. The company name is pasted on a glass door on A4 paper.
People in the building, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said BAC Consulting was registered there but had no physical presence. BAC Consulting CEO Cristiana Barsoni-Arcidiacono said on her LinkedIn profile that she has worked as a consultant for several organisations, including UNESCO. She did not respond to Askume emails seeking comment.
BAC’s registered activities range from computer game publishing to IT consultancy and crude oil extraction.
Senior Lebanese security sources confirmed a photo of the pager model, known as the AR-924. Hezbollah militants are using pagers as a low-tech means of communication in an attempt to evade Israeli location tracking.
Senior Lebanese sources said the device had been modified “at the production stage” by Israeli spy services. Israeli officials did not immediately respond to a Askume request for comment.
“Mossad injected a plate containing explosive material inside the device, which could receive the code. It would be very difficult to detect it by any means,” the source said.
Sources said when a coded message was sent to about 3,000 pagers, they detonated, causing the explosives to explode.
Another security source told Askume that the new pagers contained up to three grams of explosives that had “not been discovered” by Hezbollah for months.
In a televised address on February 13, the group’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, sternly warned supporters that their phones were more dangerous than Israeli spies and said they should destroy them, bury them or lock them in iron boxes.
Instead, Hezbollah has opted to distribute pagers to members of the group’s various branches – from fighters to medical personnel working in the relief field.
Israel’s Mossad is notorious for its cutting-edge operations, with a history dating back to the daring kidnapping of top Nazi official Adolf Eichmann in 1960. More recently, the spy agency has been accused of launching cyberattacks in 2020 and assassinating a top Iranian scientist with a remote-controlled machine gun.
