In an unprecedented security breach, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members exploded simultaneously across Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday, killing at least 26 people and injuring thousands.
Hospitals in Lebanon struggled to manage the influx of patients following the pager explosions on Tuesday, with a field hospital set up in Tyre to treat the wounded.
Hezbollah has blamed Israel and vowed retaliation. Israel has not commented, though the blasts occurred just hours after it expanded its military objectives, following the October 7 Hamas attacks, to target Hezbollah along the Lebanon border.
Details of how the attack was carried out remain unclear, but here’s what we know.
How did the devices detonate?
A senior Lebanese security official told Reuters that a small amount of explosives had been planted inside a new batch of 5,000 pagers ordered by Hezbollah. The Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, was identified as being responsible. Explosive materials were inserted into the devices with a mechanism to receive an activation code that made them difficult to detect by any scanner.
A separate source claimed around 3,000 of the pagers detonated simultaneously after receiving a coded message. Videos circulating online suggest many victims were checking their devices moments before the explosions occurred.
Details on the walkie-talkie explosions that followed on Wednesday remain limited. The devices were reportedly purchased around the same time as the pagers.
Where did the devices originate?
The plan behind the sabotage had been in the works for months. According to reports, the walkie-talkies bore a “Made in Japan” label from the ICOM brand. ICOM acknowledged the incident and is currently investigating the matter.
The pagers, linked to the Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, were reportedly part of a recent shipment to Hezbollah. A Lebanese source mentioned that the pagers had been modified by Mossad at the production level, although Gold Apollo has not been implicated in the tampering.
Why does Hezbollah use pagers?
Hezbollah uses pagers as a lower-tech communication tool to evade Israeli intelligence monitoring and tracking, which is more easily accomplished with mobile phones.
Yossi Melman, an expert on Israeli intelligence, noted that many Hezbollah members, not just senior figures, used these pagers for communication.
This security breach has been described as one of Hezbollah’s most severe intelligence failures in recent years, undermining their operational confidence.
