Nine dead, thousands hurt in Lebanon after pagers explode

Lebanon says at least nine people were killed today after pagers used by Hezbollah members exploded across the country. Israel has been blamed.

The Mid-East nation’s health minister Firass Abiad added more than 2,750 people were injured, over 200 critically, after the devices reportedly heated up and exploded. Mojtaba Amani, Iran’s ambassador to the country, was reportedly also wounded.

The Lebanese Red Cross has deployed 130 ambulances and more than 500 EMTs to deal with the aftermath. It has issued an urgent call for blood donors in the country.

A representative of Hezbollah, an Iran-backed terror organization that has significant power in Lebanon, told Al Jazeera “pagers belonging to employees of various Hezbollah units and institutions exploded.” Video footage of the blasts suggests that the pagers were rigged with fast explosives, rather than having (say) the lithium-ion batteries shorted to blow up, which would be a much slower process involving flames and smoke before any explosion. We doubt, as some assumed, that the batteries were programmed to ignite.

Earlier in the year, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned the organization to stop using smartphones as these could be compromised and advised switching to pagers.

Today Hezbollah directly accused Israel of causing the explosions. To us, if that is the case, it appears the devices were intercepted and packed with detonators, either remote activated or timed somehow, in a physical supply chain style attack.

It wouldn’t be the first time this kind of thing has happened. In 1996, Israeli intelligence agents killed Hamas’ chief bomb maker Yahya Ayyash by implanting explosives in his cellphone and detonating it during a call.

As post-Snowden leaks have shown, it’s perfectly easy for governments to intercept technology purchases and add software or whatever else they like. But to do this on such a large scale indicates an unprecedented intelligence coup.

Hezbollah has been launching attacks on Israel with Hamas ever since the latter terror group staged an attack on Israel last year.

The Israeli Defense Forces had no response at the time of publication. ®