Thousands of pagers exploded within seconds across the Lebanon yesterday in a synchronized attack targeting the US-designated terror group Hezbollah. The explosions killed at least nine and injured 2,800 individuals in the country that has been caught up in the Israel-Palestine tensions in its backyard.
Hezbollah, the political force running Lebanon, has blamed Israel for the attack. Throughout Gaza war, it supported Hamas and exchanged fire across its southern border with Israel in support for its Palestinian group.
No country or group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet. But fingers pointing at Israel raise a big question over the capabilities of Mossad, the Israeli spy agency known for carrying out targeted attacks on foreign soils.
Pager bombs – a reality?
Pagers are wireless low-tech means of communication that lost popularity in the nineties with the emergence of mobile phones. They can display text messages but not relay voice calls. Hezbollah uses pagers to avoid location-tracking by Israel.
The ones used that exploded yesterday came fitted with explosives from Taiwan, reported the New York Times. Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese firm, had placed the order and the pagers were tampered by Israeli agents before they arrived in Lebanon, the US-based newspaper said citing unnamed officials.
Some 3,000 pagers were part of a recent order for Gold Apollo that included mostly its AR-924 model, reported the NYT.
Israeli intelligence infiltrated the production process of the pagers and fitted the explosives that could be triggered remotely without any suspicion, said news agency AFP citing a Brussel-based security analyst.
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Mossad had been planning the attack for months, according to Reuters. They fitted the Taiwan-made devices with up to 3 grams of explosives that went unnoticed by Hezbollah, it reported cited Lebanese sources.
The trigger was activated and about 3,000 pagers exploded when a codeword was sent to them, the news agency reported.
Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang has denied making the pagers. He said a Hungarian firm named BAC that had the right to use his company’s brand name were the original makers.
Why Israel Is Being Blamed
Early Tuesday morning, Israeli PMO released a statement that the safe return of residents evacuated from northern Israel – which borders southern Lebanon – was among its war goals.
Hours later, blasts rocked Lebanon.
Mossad, which has a long history of carrying out sophisticated remote attacks on foreign soil, came under question though Israel never claims responsibility for such covert operations.
Read | 3 Grams Of Explosives Per Pager: Israel’s Complex Op To Hurt Hezbollah
The latest such incident that was linked to Israel was the killing of a top Hamas commander in Iran. Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination in a blast at a high-security VIP compound in a posh Tehran locality was carried out by Mossad, The Telegraph (UK) reported. The bomb was smuggled in months ago, the NYT had said, and was triggered remotely after Haniyeh entered that particular room.
Mossad also played a big role in the ‘Operation Wrath of God’, codenamed Bayonet, which was activated to avenge the murders of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian operatives at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.
During the operation, they used telephones not only to track their enemies but to kill them. A top leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was killed in Paris in a blast that occurred after he answered a telephone call. This marked the emergence of what came to be known as telephone bombs.
Mobile phones were the next target as technology evolved. A bomb-making expert of the Hamas was killed in 1996 after his mobile phone blasted when he answered a call.
Linked or not, attacks on Palestinians and their allies using telephone, mobile phone, and now pagers complete a cycle of using communication means as weapons.
