New Delhi: Israel likely inserted explosives in nearly 5,000 Hezbollah-ordered pagers that simultaneously detonated across Lebanon Tuesday, while the devices’ Taiwanese maker has clarified that a European company manufactured them under its brand name.
The Iran-backed militant group has vowed revenge for the attack that killed at least eight people and a child, and wounded nearly 3,000, including Hezbollah fighters and Iran’s envoy to Beirut.
Ambassador Mojtaba Amani’s injuries are serious, according to reports, with possible eye damage. His pager had beeped for several seconds before detonating, they said.
Israel planted the explosives at the production level in the pagers ordered months ago by the Hezbollah from Taiwanese firm Gold Apple, reports said. They went undetected till Tuesday’s detonation.
Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, was allegedly able to place small amounts of explosive material injected as a board inside the device, which can also receive a code for detonation, as reported by Reuters. A message was sent to the one-way communications device Tuesday afternoon in Lebanon to set them off. The explosions began around 3.30 pm and continued for about an hour according to reports.
The New York Times reported that the explosives were placed next to the battery in each pager, and a switch embedded to detonate them remotely.
The unprecedented breach of Hezbollah’s low-technology communication systems comes after 11 months of fighting between the Shia group and Tel Aviv over the Gaza offensive. However, these exchanges had so far remained on the border.
‘Hungary-based BAC made devices’
Taiwan’s Gold Apollo has denied manufacturing the devices, claiming that Hungary-based BAC — a company with the licence to use its brand — was the real manufacturer of the AR924 pager model.
“We only provide brand trademark authorisation and have no involvement in the design or manufacturing of the product,” said the Taiwanese company in a statement.
Gold Apollo’s founder and chairperson Hsu Ching-kuang told reporters Wednesday that the pagers were made by its European distributor, according to CNN. Hsu said his firm had signed a contract with the distributor to use the Gold Apollo brand.
According to the CNN report, Hsu said the European distributor established a relationship with the Taiwanese firm about three years ago, initially importing Gold Apollo’s pager and communication products.
Later, the company told the Taiwanese firm they wanted to make their own pager and asked to use its brand.
A senior Taiwanese security official told CNN Wednesday that Taiwan has no record of Gold Apollo pagers being shipped to Lebanon or the Middle East. Gold Apollo shipped about 2,60,000 pagers from Taiwan from January 2022 to August 2024, mostly to the United States and Australia, the official said.
We did not know: US
Israel’s closest ally America has denied knowledge of the attack.
“I can tell you that the U.S. was not involved in it, the U.S. was not aware of this incident in advance. And at this point, we are gathering information,” said Matthew Miller, the State Department Spokesperson at a press briefing Tuesday.
Why does Hezbollah use pagers?
The Lebanese militant outfit switched to pagers after targeted air strikes by Israel killed a number of its senior commanders earlier this year.
Tel Aviv is reported to have one of the world’s most sophisticated electronic surveillance networks, which led Hezbollah to adopt low-technology strategies in its operations, including the use of fixed land-line telephones and electronic pagers.
In November 2023, a woman in Southern Lebanon received a call from an unknown number and was asked whether her family was home. Speaking in Arabic, the woman said no, and minutes later an Israeli missile slammed into her home in Beit Yahoun, killing five Hezbollah fighters including the son of a senior Hezbollah lawmaker, according to Reuters.
This led to the group warning its members to keep away from cellphones and to disconnect any security cameras from the Internet. Within weeks of the attack on Beit Yahoun, a number of senior Hezbollah commanders were killed in targeted strikes.
By February this year, the outfit had banned the use of cellphones in its battlefield operations and replaced them with pagers.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
Also read: Exploding pagers injure hundreds of Hezbollah members in Lebanon in ‘biggest security breach’