Deadly pagers made by Budapest company, Israel blamed

The hundreds of pagers that exploded in Lebanon had apparently been acquired by the militant group Hezbollah after the group's leader ordered members to stop using mobile phones, warning they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence.

At least 12 people were killed and nearly 3000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon on Tuesday.

Israel's spy agency Mossad, which has a long history of pulling off sophisticated attacks on foreign soil, planted explosives inside pagers imported by Hezbollah months before the detonations, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.

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 it authorised its brand on the pagers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria, but they were manufactured by a company based in Budapest.

"The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it," Gold Apollo founder and president, Hsu Ching-kuang, told reporters at the company's offices in the northern Taiwanese city of New Taipei on Wednesday.

Iran-backed Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, saying in a statement on Wednesday that "the resistance will continue today, like any other day, its operations to support Gaza, its people and its resistance which is a separate path from the harsh punishment that the criminal enemy (Israel) should await in response to Tuesday's massacre".

A senior Lebanese source told Reuters that the pagers had been modified by Israel's spy service "at the production level."

"The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It's very hard to detect it through any means. Even with any device or scanner," the source said.

The source said 3000 of the pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them, simultaneously activating the explosives.

Another security source told Reuters that up to three grams of explosives were hidden in the new pagers and had gone "undetected" by Hezbollah for months.

However, Hsu said he did not know how the pagers could have been rigged to explode.

Israeli officials did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment about the detonations.

A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the detonation of the pagers was the "biggest security breach" the group had been subjected to in nearly a year of conflict with Israel.

Video reportedly showing device exploding in a bag- #Lebanon #Israel pic.twitter.com/UHUiGklUy6? Maha Yahya (@mahamyahya) September 17, 2024

Hezbollah was reeling from the attack, which left fighters and others bloodied, hospitalised or dead.

One Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the detonation was the group's "biggest security breach" since the Gaza conflict between Israel and Hezbollah ally Hamas erupted on October 7.

"This would easily be the biggest counterintelligence failure that Hezbollah has had in decades," said Jonathan Panikoff, the US government's former deputy national intelligence officer on the Middle East.

The explosions maimed many Hezbollah members, according to footage from hospitals reviewed by Reuters. Wounded men had injuries of varying degrees to the face, missing fingers and gaping wounds at the hip where the pagers were likely worn.

"We really got hit hard," said the senior Lebanese security source, who has direct knowledge of the group's probe into the explosions.

The pager blasts came at a time of mounting concern about tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, which have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the Gaza conflict erupted last October.

The US says it is gathering information on the pager explosions.

"I can tell you that the US was not involved in it," US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said. "The US was not aware of this incident in advance. And at this point, we're gathering information."

Agencies