Thousands of pagers explode in Lebanon killing twelve people and injuring thousands

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

On Tuesday, a series of coordinated pager explosions occurred in southern Beirut and the Bekaa Valley, in Lebanon, resulting in twelve deaths and 2,800 injuries. According to CNN, the blasts targeted Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group. The cause of the explosions was still under investigation. Early evidence suggested the pager explosions were triggered by explosives planted in the pagers, or faulty batteries, Reuters reported. The following day, walkie-talkies, laptops, and radios also exploded, killing 20 people and injuring 450.

CCTV footage of a pager explosion in Beirut.
Image: Unknown; upload by Sdkb.

Representatives from consulting firms Predicta Lab and Le Beck told CNN that hardware tampering was likely involved in the pager explosions. They ruled out cyber attack as a possible cause. The latter firm suggested the malicious modifications could have been made before shipping the bulk order to the country.

Aljazeera reported that a shipment of pagers was in a port for three months awaiting import paperwork. They also reported that early investigations suggested the pagers included one to three grams of pentaerythritol tetranitrate along with metal balls, presumably added to increase the impact of an explosion.

The attack was allegedly timed to occur before Hezbollah started an investigation into inconsistent battery life of several pagers from the batch, The National (Abu Dhabi) reported.

The pagers were a brand owned by a Taiwanese company called Gold Apollo. On Wednesday, Gold Apollo released a statement saying the AR-924 pagers were manufactured by BAC Consulting KFT, a company based in the capital of Hungary. Hungarian authorities denied that the pagers were manufactured by BAC Consulting KFT, CNN reported. The CEO of BAC Consulting KFT told NBC News that the company did not manufacture the pagers, citing its role as “just the intermediate”. According to the BBC, records indicated BAC was registered to a building with several organisations registered at the same address—which was not a manufacturing facility for BAC.

Mary Ellen O’Connell, a Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, United States condemned the attacks saying “[w]eaponising an object used by civilians is strictly prohibited”, while the UN called for an investigation.

Lebanon’s foreign ministry called the incident an “Israeli cyberattack”, according to Reuters. Israel did not take responsibility.

The incidents came amid heightened tensions between Israel and Hezbollah following the Israel-Hamas War which had began in 2023.

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