On Tuesday (17), a series of explosions hit pager-type messaging devices in several locations in southern Lebanon, mainly south of Beirut, a region under the control of the terrorist group Hezbollah.
The explosions killed at least 12 people, including a child who international agencies say was the daughter of a Hezbollah member, and two Hezbollah terrorists. The number of injured is estimated at around 2,800, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health. The explosions also spread to Syria, where a non-governmental organization reported that 14 people were injured when similar devices detonated on the outskirts of Damascus.
This Wednesday (18), new Hezbollah communication devices, this time walkie-talkies, were detonated again in Beirut and southern Lebanon, causing the death of 20 people and injuring more than 300, as reported by the Lebanese Ministry of Health.
On Tuesday, Hezbollah quickly blamed Israel for the blasts, calling them a “massacre.” On Wednesday, the terrorist group vowed a “specific” response against the country ruled by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the attack.
“What happened yesterday [terça] will fill us with the will and insistence to follow the path of resistance,” the terrorist group said in an official statement. On Tuesday, Hezbollah also reinforced that revenge would come “from where the enemy expects it and from where he does not expect it.”
The Lebanese government on Tuesday also endorsed the accusation against Israel. Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the attack represented a “criminal aggression” and a serious violation of the country’s sovereignty.
Despite the serious accusations, Israel has not commented on or taken responsibility for the explosions carried out on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Israeli army, however, declared that it is prepared for “any mission” on the border with Lebanon, and the head of Israel’s Northern Command, Major General Ori Gordin, reinforced today that Israeli forces are “determined to change the security situation as quickly as possible.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu, for his part, said on Wednesday, without mentioning the episodes in Lebanon, that Israel “will return the residents of the north [do país, que faz fronteira com o sul do Líbano] to their homes safely.”
“I have already said that we will return the residents of the north safely to their homes and that is exactly what we will do,” Netanyahu said in a brief video message.
International newspapers commented on authorship; pagers have dubious origins
Although Israel has not made any official statement about the accusations of involvement in the explosions, information released by the American broadcaster CNN and by the newspaper The New York Times on Tuesday indicate that yesterday’s pager explosions were an “operation” conducted by Israel through the Mossad, the country’s intelligence agency, in partnership with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
According to the Teamsciting information obtained through anonymous US military sources, the pagers that were in the possession of Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon were targeted by Israeli sabotage. According to the newspaper, they were manufactured in Taiwan, equipped with explosives during transport and later delivered and distributed by Hezbollah in various regions of Lebanon and Syria. The publication detailed that small quantities of explosives, weighing between 20 and 40 grams, were placed next to the battery of these pagers, with a remote trigger device that was activated simultaneously in several locations after the pagers received a message that appeared to come from Hezbollah leadership, but which, in fact, served to activate the installed explosives, which made a brief audible noise before being detonated.
The exploded pagers were model AR924, from the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo, according to the Teams and the CNN. However, Hsu Ching-kuang, founder and chairman of Gold Apollo, said on Wednesday that the product was not his company’s: “It only had our brand,” he said, referring to the devices. Hsu said his company had signed a contract with a European manufacturer, BAC Consulting KFT – named in a statement – that had developed the devices and had permission to use the Gold Apollo brand.
BAC Consulting KFT is based in Budapest, the capital of Hungary. Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, a woman identified as BAC’s CEO, however, denied the company’s involvement in manufacturing the pagers. She told the American broadcaster NBC News that “I don’t make the pagers. I’m just the middleman. I think you got it wrong.”
According to information from Radio Free Europe (RFL), BAC has a confusing address in Budapest. The information provided about the location of the company’s headquarters matches that of a building located in a residential area in the suburbs of the Hungarian capital. A person who did not want to be identified and who lives in this building where BAC’s headquarters are supposedly located told RFL who never saw an individual he could identify as an employee of the company at that location. According to the anonymous person, the location only received correspondence once a month.
Cybercrime expert Mikko Hypponen told Teams that “the pagers were likely modified to cause these explosions, indicating a carefully planned attack.”
Both the American newspaper and the CNN They said, citing anonymous US military sources, that the operation was meticulously planned by Israel to target Hezbollah at a time of vulnerability. In recent months, the terrorist group had replaced its use of smartphones with pagers, believing that these low-tech devices would be less susceptible to Israeli espionage and attacks.
According to the TeamsIn July of this year, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah instructed his members to abandon their cell phones, claiming that such devices made it easier for Israel to track them. Cybersecurity experts such as Keren Elazari of Tel Aviv University told the American newspaper that the adoption of pagers was a strategic mistake, since, according to Elazari, Israel had found a way to compromise this technology. The attack, she said, hit Hezbollah at its most vulnerable point, because the terrorist group had discarded cell phones and relied on pagers as a means of communication.
“We’ve seen these types of devices, pagers, targeted before, but not in such a sophisticated attack,” Elazari explained.
Lebanese journalist Kim Ghattas, who writes for the American magazine The Atlantiche told the broadcaster CNN on Tuesday that the pager explosions were “clearly a targeted attack by Israel against Hezbollah members.”
Ghattas gave two possible reasons for Israel to carry out such an attack. The first would be an attempt to demonstrate to Hezbollah that the country has extensive knowledge of its operations, which could force the terrorist group to adopt a more “submissive” stance and “make it clear that an increase in its attacks against Israel will be met with even greater violence,” he said.
The second hypothesis, said the journalist, would be that the attack was a kind of “preparation” for a large-scale military campaign against Lebanon, taking advantage of the confusion caused by the explosions.
Other sources have also suggested to international news agencies that the Mossad may have infiltrated Hezbollah’s supply chain by inserting explosives into pagers during production or transportation of the devices. The broadcaster Al Jazeera and the agency Reuters reported that the explosives were inserted into more than 5,000 pagers that had been purchased by Hezbollah and, according to the outlets, manufactured in Taiwan, Teams gave a smaller number, 3 thousand.
Experts such as former CIA analyst Edward Snowden have also supported the theory of sabotage by Israel, stating that the coordinated explosion of so many devices indicates the deliberate insertion of explosive material, ruling out the hypothesis of a hacker attack or spontaneous battery failures.
To the news site Axios and Al-Monitoranonymous US government sources reportedly said that the explosives in the pagers were detonated ahead of schedule. This is believed to have occurred because Hezbollah terrorists discovered the plan attributed to Israel. According to these sources, the idea was that this attack with the pagers was the first step in a larger-scale offensive.
According to expert Alcides Fonseca, from the University of Coimbra, the explosion of both pagers and walkie-talkies could not have been simply the result of malfunction or overheating, but rather of a likely deliberate and sophisticated alteration made by someone with electronics skills and access to the device, which reinforces the theory of a deliberate attack. He did not hold Israel responsible for the explosions.
“It is very unrealistic that a normal pager overheating would have an explosion of that magnitude. What can happen is that since pagers are thicker devices, it is possible to put larger batteries or some type of material that enhances their explosion inside. And this is done without the user noticing, because the boxes [dos dispositivos] are large. The theory that someone managed to gain access to the pagers and modify them internally seems more plausible to me,” he said in an interview with Radio France Internationale (RFI).
UN Position
The international reaction was immediate. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, called for an independent investigation into the explosions, highlighting that the deaths, which he also included civilians and children, are a cause for “extreme concern”. In turn, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, also expressed his concern, calling on all parties involved to act with “restraint” to avoid an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East, where Israel is already facing the terrorist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip after being the target of a terrorist attack carried out by the Palestinians on October 7, 2023.
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