Hezbollah is hit by a wave of exploding pagers that killed at least 9
people and injured thousands
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[September 18, 2024]
By BASSEM MROUE, ABBY SEWELL and KAREEM CHEHAYEB
BEIRUT (AP) — Pagers used by hundreds of members of the militant group
Hezbollah exploded near-simultaneously Tuesday in Lebanon and Syria,
killing at least nine people, including an 8-year-old girl, and wounding
several thousand, officials said. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government
blamed Israel for what appeared to be a sophisticated remote attack.
An American official said Israel briefed the United States on Tuesday
after the conclusion of the operation, in which small amounts of
explosive secreted in the pagers were detonated. The person spoke on the
condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the
information publicly.
The Israeli military declined to comment.
Among those wounded was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon. The mysterious
explosions came amid rising tensions between Israel and Iran-backed
Hezbollah, which have exchanged fire across the Israel-Lebanon border
since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that sparked the war in Gaza.
The pagers that blew up were apparently acquired by Hezbollah after the
group’s leader ordered members in February to stop using cellphones,
warning they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence. A Hezbollah
official told The Associated Press the pagers were a new brand, but
declined to say how long they had been in use.
Taiwanese company Gold Apollo said Wednesday that it authorized its
brand on the AR-924 pagers used by the Hezbollah militant group, but the
devices were produced and sold by a company called BAC.
At about 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, as people shopped for
groceries, sat in cafes or drove cars and motorcycles in the afternoon
traffic, the pagers in their hands or pockets started heating up and
then exploding — leaving blood-splattered scenes and panicking
bystanders.
It appeared that many of those hit were members of Hezbollah, but it was
not immediately clear if non-Hezbollah members also carried any of the
exploding pagers.
The blasts were mainly in areas where the group has a strong presence,
particularly a southern Beirut suburb and in the Beqaa region of eastern
Lebanon, as well as in Damascus, according to Lebanese security
officials and a Hezbollah official. The Hezbollah official spoke on
condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the
press.
The explosions came hours after Israel’s internal security agency said
it had foiled an attempt by Hezbollah to kill a former senior Israeli
security official using a planted explosive device that could be
remotely detonated.
The United States “was not aware of this incident in advance” and was
not involved, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said. “At
this point, we’re gathering information."
Experts said the pager explosions pointed to a long-planned operation,
possibly carried out by infiltrating the supply chain and rigging the
devices with explosives before they were delivered to Lebanon.
Whatever the means, it targeted an extraordinary breadth of people with
hundreds of small explosions — wherever the pager carrier happened to be
— that left some maimed.
One online video showed a man picking through produce at a grocery store
when the bag he was carrying at his hip explodes, sending him sprawling
to the ground and bystanders running.
At overwhelmed hospitals, wounded were rushed in on stretchers, some
with missing hands, faces partly blown away or gaping holes at their
hips and legs, according to AP photographers. On a main road in central
Beirut, a car door was splattered with blood and the windshield cracked.
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People donate blood for those who were injured by their exploded
handheld pagers, at a Red Cross center, in the southern port city of
Sidon, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Lebanon Health Minister Firas Abiad told Qatar's Al Jazeera network at
least nine people were killed, including an 8-year-old girl, and some
2,750 were wounded — 200 of them critically — by the explosions. Most
had injuries in the face, hand, or around the abdomen.
It appeared eight of the dead belonged to Hezbollah. The group issued a
statement confirming at least two members were killed in the pager
bombings. One of them was the son of a Hezbollah member in Parliament,
according to the Hezbollah official who spoke anonymously. The group
later issued announcements that six other members were killed Tuesday,
though it did not specify how.
“We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal
aggression that also targeted civilians,” Hezbollah said, adding that
Israel will “for sure get its just punishment.”
Iranian state-run IRNA news agency said that the country’s ambassador,
Mojtaba Amani, was superficially wounded by an exploding pager and was
being treated at a hospital.
Previously, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had warned the group’s
members not to carry cellphones, saying they could be used by Israel to
track and target them.
Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordnance
disposal expert, said videos of the blasts suggested a small explosive
charge — as small as a pencil eraser — had been placed into the devices.
They would have had to have been rigged prior to delivery, very likely
by Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, he said.
Elijah J. Magnier, a Brussels-based senior political risk analyst, said
he spoke with Hezbollah members who had examined pagers that failed to
explode. What triggered the blasts, he said, appeared to be an error
message sent to all the devices that caused them to vibrate, forcing the
user to click on the buttons to stop the vibration. The combination
detonated a small amount of explosives hidden inside and ensured that
the user was present when the blast went off, he said.
Israel has a long history of carrying out deadly operations well beyond
its borders. This year, separate Israeli airstrikes in Beirut killed
senior Hamas official Saleh Arouri and a top Hezbollah commander. A
mysterious explosion in Iran, also blamed on Israel, killed Ismail
Haniyeh, Hamas’ supreme leader.
Israel has killed Hamas militants in the past with booby-trapped
cellphones and it’s widely believed to have been behind the Stuxnet
computer virus attack on Iran’s nuclear program in 2010.
The pager bombings are likely to stoke Hezbollah's worries about
vulnerabilities in security and communications as Israeli officials are
threaten to escalate their monthslong conflict. The near-daily exchanges
of fire between Israel and Hezbollah have killed hundreds in Lebanon and
several dozen in Israel, and have displaced tens of thousands on both
sides of the border.
Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon,
deplored the attack and warned that it marks “an extremely concerning
escalation in what is an already unacceptably volatile context.”
On Tuesday, Israel said that halting Hezbollah’s attacks in the north to
allow residents to return to their homes is now an official war goal.
Israeli Defense Minister Gallant said the focus of the conflict is
shifting from Gaza to Israel’s north and that time is running out for a
diplomatic solution with Hezbollah.
___
Associated Press writers Hussein Malla, Hassan Ammar, Fadi Tawil and
Sarah El Deeb in Beirut; Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates;
Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran; Michael Biesecker in Washington; Josef
Federman in Jerusalem; Zeke Miller in Washington; and Edith M. Lederer
at the United Nations contributed to this report.
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