Pagers – also known as beepers or ‘pagers’ – in the possession of members of the Shiite group Lebanese Hezbollah that exploded on Tuesday and caused The deaths of at least 8 people and more than 2,800 injured were part of a shipment that “recently arrived” in Lebanonsaid the country’s telecommunications minister, Johanny Corn.
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“I don’t have any details yet, but I am aware that this shipment of devices arrived recently.”said the head of telecommunications in statements to the press after the meeting of the Lebanese Council of Ministers.
The minister, who insisted that his department had not yet gathered enough information about what happened, said that the batteries in the pagers had heated up, so some people “felt the temperature of the device and threw it away” before it exploded.
“It may have been activated remotely, but we don’t know how,” Corn added, suggesting thatIt is most likely that the pagers were introduced into Lebanon for that purpose.
“We need to know how and when this shipment of devices entered Lebanon, which company they belong to, who their owner is… We need to know more details to know how this device works and how it entered Lebanon,” the minister said.
Experts say it seems unlikely that the attack was carried out through some kind of hack that could have caused the pager’s batteries to overheat. For some, Images of explosions do not match battery overheating.
Early theories suggest it was a so-called supply chain attack, in which the pagers were tampered with during manufacturing or in transit.
It may have been activated remotely, but we don’t know how.
The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health reported today that at least Eight people were killed and more than 2,800 injured, some 200 of them seriously, when pagers exploded in a series of attacks in several parts of Lebanon.
The Shiite group, for its part, acknowledged that the pagers were in the possession of its members and said in a statement that it is still unknown what caused the massive explosions and that its experts are carrying out a large-scale “security and scientific” investigation to determine the causes of what happened.
The simultaneous explosions occurred mainly in areas in the south of the country and in the Beirut suburbs controlled by the armed movement.which has been locked in an intense crossfire with the Jewish state for more than eleven months.
At least 14 people were also injured in and around Damascus on Tuesday when pager devices belonging to members of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah exploded simultaneously, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
According to a statement from the NGO, based in the United Kingdom and with a wide network of collaborators on the ground, One of the explosions occurred inside a vehicle that was travelling in the capital’s Kafr Sousa neighbourhood, where four people were injured.
How do these beepers work and what other hypotheses are being considered?
A munitions expert who worked in the British Army, who asked not to be named, told the BBC that The devices would likely have been loaded with between 10 and 20 grams each of high-grade military explosive, hidden inside a fake electronic component.. This, the expert said, would have been put together by a signal, something called an alphanumeric text message.
Once armed, the next person using the device would detonate the explosive. So far, less than 1% of pagers that have exploded have been fatal, but with hundreds seriously injured, this is a major psychological blow to Hezbollah.
But what are these devices and how do they work? The first thing is that pagers are still used to communicate in places like hospitals because of their reliability, even though the proliferation of mobile phones has almost driven them to extinction..
These devices, in the form of small boxes, allow you to receive messages, sound alerts or telephone numbers using their own radio frequency and therefore without going through mobile telephone networks, which can be interrupted, have connection problems or be intercepted.
“Rest assured that the signal from pagers penetrates steel like metal, while that of a mobile phone could be blocked”reads the website of the American company Spok, which specializes in this product.
“Paging systems offer a more reliable means of communication, for example in the event of a Wi-Fi or telephone network failure,” says another manufacturer, Discover Systems.
Pagers were very popular in the 1980s and 1990s, but Its use has declined and is now limited mostly to hospitals, particularly in the United States. According to a 2017 Journal of Hospital Medicine study, nearly 80% of hospitalists used pagers and half of the messages they received were related to patient care.
According to the Spok company, The first pager was patented in the United States in 1949 by Alfred Gross, a pioneer of wireless communication.It then began to be used in a New York hospital.
The term “pager” was officially registered in 1959 by the Motorola company, a market leader for decades.
Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blame Israel for the explosion
The Lebanese Foreign Ministry and the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah have each blamed Israel for the massive pager explosion.
“After examining all the facts, current data and available information regarding the heinous attack that occurred this afternoon, we hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression that also targeted civilians and killed several people,” Hezbollah said in a statement.
The armed group promised in its statement that the Jewish state would receive a “just” punishment for the action.
The Lebanese Foreign Ministry also attributed Tuesday’s incident to an “Israeli cyber attack, in which a large number of pagers were detonated,” and said it was preparing a complaint to the UN Security Council.
“This serious and deliberate Israeli escalation coincides with Israeli threats to expand the war into Lebanon and its intransigent stance calling for more bloodshed, destruction and sabotage,” the government department said in a statement.
Given the large number of victims caused by the event, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health has called for “all” hospitals in the affected areas to activate the “highest alert” level and prepare to deal with an “urgent need for emergency health services.”
In Beirut, a large number of ambulances could be heard moving around the city following the explosions, while the National News Agency (ANN) already reported more than a hundred injured in Sidon (south) and dozens more in Tyre (south).
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