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- New details shed light on Israel's stunning pager plot that ravaged Hezbollah
New details shed light on Israel's stunning pager plot that ravaged Hezbollah
A new report lays out how Hezbollah were fooled into purchasing the exploding pagers
A new reports sheds light on the sophisticated Israeli plot that saw pagers held by Hezbollah members across Lebanon explode and decimate the jihadist group's ranks.
According to Reuters, one of the operation's main challenges consisted in coming up with a plausible backstory to diffuse suspicion of the deceptively designed weaponized pagers that arrived in Lebanon in early 2024.
To this end, Israelis created fake online stores, pages and posts that could deceive Hezbollah due diligence, a review of web archives conducted by Reuters shows.
The stealthy design of the pager bomb and the battery’s carefully constructed cover story were key to the execution of a years-long operation that has struck unprecedented blows against the jihadist militia.
A thin, square sheet with six grams of white pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) plastic explosive was squeezed between two rectangular battery cells, according to the Lebanese source and photos obtained by Reuters.
The remaining space between the battery cells could not be seen in the photos but was occupied by a strip of highly flammable material that acted as the detonator, the source told the news agency.
This "three-layer sandwich" was inserted in a black plastic sleeve, and encapsulated in a metal casing roughly the size of a matchbox, the photos showed.
The assembly was unusual because it did not rely on a standard miniaturized detonator, typically a metallic cylinder; without any metal components, the material used to trigger detonation had an edge: like the plastic explosives, it was not detected by X-ray.
Upon receiving the pagers in February, Hezbollah looked for the presence of explosives, two people familiar with the matter said, putting them through airport security scanners to see if they triggered alarms. Nothing suspicious was reported.
It is understood that the devices were set up to generate a spark within the battery pack, enough to light the detonating material, and trigger the sheet of PETN to explode.
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Since explosives and wrapping took about a third of the volume, the battery pack carried a fraction of the power consistent with its 35-gram weight, two battery experts said.
At some point, Hezbollah noticed the battery was draining faster than expected, the Lebanese source said. However, the issue did not appear to raise major security concerns as the group was still handing its operatives the pagers hours before the attack.
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On September 17, thousands of pagers simultaneously exploded in the southern suburbs of Beirut and other Hezbollah strongholds, in most cases after the devices beeped, indicating an incoming message.
Among the victims rushed to hospital, many had eye injuries, missing fingers or gaping holes in their abdomens, indicating their proximity to the devices at the time of detonation. In total, the pager attack, and a second on the following day that activated weaponized walkie-talkies, killed 39 people and wounded more than 3,400.