By Enyichukwu Enemanna
At least five persons have been reported dead, while over 3,000 were injured after an Israel’s spy agency, MOSSAD planted explosives inside 5,000 pagers imported by Lebanese group Hezbollah months ago.
The coordinated detonations in Lebanon on Tuesday also resulted to the death of Hezbollah fighters and Iran’s representative in Beirut.
The operation according to analysts was an unprecedented Hezbollah security breach.
The pagers, imported from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, were reportedly not manufactured by the company itself but by a European firm named BAC, which has a licence to use Gold Apollo’s branding.
The founder of Gold Apollo, Hsu Ching-Kuang confirmed that while his company authorised the branding, it was not involved in the design or production.
“The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it,” he told reporters on Wednesday, without naming the company which did make the devices.
A reliable Lebanese security source identified the model as an AP924, a pager equipped to receive text messages but without phone-call capabilities.
MOSSAD allegedly modified the devices at the production stage by embedding explosive materials within the circuit boards, making detection nearly impossible.
Nearly 3,000 of the pagers exploded simultaneously after receiving a coded message, with the explosives going undetected for months.
Up to three grammes of explosives were hidden in each pager, according to security sources. The blasts left Hezbollah fighters, medics, and civilians severely injured, with many suffering facial injuries, missing fingers, and shrapnel wounds. Footage from hospitals confirmed the extent of the damage.
Hezbollah fighters have been using pagers as a low-tech means of communication in an attempt to evade Israeli location-tracking, two sources familiar with the group’s operations told Reuters this year.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah, a group backed by Iran, has vowed retaliation against Israel.
In a statement following the attacks, Hezbollah declared that it would continue its support for Gaza while preparing for a separate response to what it called a “massacre” by Israel.
