Pager Blasts in Lebanon Kill 32, Injure Over 2,800
Photo via Reuters
Luke Madden: Beirut and other parts of Lebanon were thrown into chaos two weeks ago when pagers and other wireless devices used by the Shia militant group Hezbollah exploded, killing 32 and injuring several thousand.
American officials confirmed that the Israeli military and intelligence service were behind the attack, which was the first stage of a multifront offensive Israel has mounted against Hezbollah in recent weeks.Since the renewal of hostilities between Israel and Hamas in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, tensions between Hezbollah and Israel have been at an all-time high. Hezbollah, one of the most well-armed non-state actors in the Middle East, has been exchanging fire with Israel since last October in a move it says is in solidarity with Hamas and Palestinians in Gaza.
Hezbollah has been a tenacious enemy of Israel due to its focus on secrecy as a cornerstone of its military strategy, eschewing technology to avoid infiltration from American and Israeli spyware. Earlier this year, now-deceased Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah ordered members and their families to dispose of their cell phones, calling them “the collaborator and the killer”, over concerns that Israel could use them to track Hezbollah’s movements. The organization turned to using pagers instead which, when used, would prompt members to contact one another over telephone lines. However, this option was not without risk.
Around 3:30 p.m. local time on Sept.17, according to Hezbollah, pagers used by the organization’s members exploded almost simultaneously in parts of Lebanon and Syria. Several areas in Lebanon, especially Beirut’s southern suburbs, were particularly affected as those regions are Hezbollah strongholds. Footage of the incident shows shoppers and bystanders collapsed in the street after the blasts. The injureds’ wounds included lost fingers, damaged eyes and abdominal lacerations. While several of the individuals killed were Hezbollah combatants, at least two health workers were killed in the attack, and an unknown number of members of Hezbollah’s civilian operations also possessed pagers. The next day, walkie-talkies in Beirut and parts of Lebanon also exploded in a second wave of attacks, killing at least 20 people and injuring more than 450, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
The pager bombings appeared to be a complex Israeli operation that took place over many months. Many experts believe that Israel infiltrated the supply chain of the pagers and rigged hundreds of them with explosives before they were shipped to Lebanon. Lebanese authorities stated that the devices used in the attacks were Gold Apollo Rugged Paper AR-924 pagers and ICOM IC-V82 walkie-talkies. Both companies have distanced themselves from the devices, with ICOM saying that the IC-V82 model was discontinued a decade ago and Hsu Ching-kuang, chairman of Gold Apollo, claiming that the pagers were manufactured by a Hungarian firm named BAC Consulting under a licensing agreement that gave the Hungarian company “sole responsibility” for the production and sale of the AR-924 model. Hsu was questioned by Taiwanese authorities before being released on Sept. 19.
While the attack may seem like science-fiction, Israel has a history of carrying out remote attacks such as these ones. Experts believe that Israel and the United States were responsible for deploying stuxnet, a computer virus that destroyed centrifuges at an Iranian nuclear facility in 2009 and 2010, and in 2020 an Iranian nuclear scientist was assassinated by a remote-controlled machine gun. Experts say that the operation in Lebanon likely had a twofold purpose: firstly, to send a message to Hezbollah that Israeli intelligence could target them anytime, anywhere, and secondly, to create a heightened sense of paranoia among Hezbollah’s senior leadership.
Global leaders are scrambling to prevent the situation from escalating, with the U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin speaking twice with his Israeli counterpart, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, according to two U.S. defense officials. While they declined to say when these calls occurred, it is rare for two calls to be scheduled in one day, showing just how seriously the United States sees the current situation. With the recent news of Israeli ground operations in Lebanon, it is clear that these attacks were just the prelude to a broader offensive against Hezbollah. The ramifications of this offensive will almost certainly reach beyond the Levant and into the world at large.
Luke Madden is a staff writer for On the Record. He is a freshman in the School of Foreign Service currently undeclared, but planning to study International Political Economy or International Politics. He is originally from Pasadena, California.