Explained: How were Hezbollah pager blasts done? Why is Israel being suspected?

Around 21 hours have passed since synchronised pager blasts across Lebanon left at least 11 persons, including a child, dead and more than 4,000 people injured. But it is still not clear who pulled off this extraordinary attack on the Hezbollah — the armed militant group backed by Iran that uses these devices — and how.

While Israel is the primary suspect — having both a history of enmity with the Hezbollah and the wherewithal to carry out such a high-tech attack on this kind of scale — it has remained tight-lipped so far.

So, why does the Hezbollah use pagers, a device that preceded mobile phones and have long since been obsolete across most of the world? How were the blasts carried out? Why is Israel’s hand being suspected? Here is all we know so far.

What happened on Tuesday?

Thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah members exploded almost simultaneously across Lebanon, mostly in capital Beirut, around 3.45 pm local time (6.15 pm IST). The blasts happened more or less within an hour of each other. That indicates a sophisticated, coordinated attack.

Video clips posted on social media showed blasts — that sounded like fireworks or gunshots — near a fruit stall, at a cash counter, in people’s pockets, among others. Reportedly, some people saw smoke coming out of the devices immediately before the blasts.

The magnitude of the attack started becoming clear as hundreds of people were rushed to hospitals across the country with explosion wounds. Even if the targets were Hezbollah members, the victims were all kinds of people, including children and the elderly. Some healthcare workers were also reportedly injured.

Two of the nine persons killed were sons of two Hezbollah MPs. The child who was killed was the daughter of a Hezbollah member. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, received minor injuries. Fourteen people were reportedly injured in similar blasts in the neighbouring Syria, too.

According to a BBC report, most of the injuries were to the hands and/or face, especially the eyes. Some hands or fingers had to be amputated. Those who were carrying the pagers in their pockets received injuries to their thighs, waist, or hips.

Why does Hezbollah use the outdated pagers?

It is precisely because of Isreal that the Hezbollah dumped the “vulnerable” mobile phones and picked up the relatively low-tech pagers, which it had deemed to be safer so far.

First, it tries to evade location-tracking by Israel, which is easier with mobile phones. Two, it eliminates the possibility of a “phone bomb” — the kind that Israel used to assassinate Hamas bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash as far back as in 1996. His phone had exploded in his hand when he held it to his ear.

Pagers, which were widely used in the 1980s and 1990s, are not GPS-enabled; these have no microphones or cameras, and are tougher to hack. The devices are usually powered by single AA or AAA batteries though the newest models have introduced lithium-ion batteries.

How were the blasts carried out?

Primarily, experts have come up with two theories. One, it could be a cyberattack, in which the devices were digitally hacked to cause the pagers’ batteries to overheat and explode. Such an act is unheard of.

According to this theory, the pager server was compromised, and a manipulated script was installed that caused an overload, resulting in the overheating of the lithium battery.

However, most experts disagree with this theory, because the magnitude of the explosions and the nature of injuries are inconsistent with what might have happened due to overheated batteries, they argue.

The second and more plausible theory that experts have come up with is a supply chain manipulation.

A Hezbollah operative told news agency AP that the pagers that exploded were a new brand the group had not used before. From the footage shared so far, the model being used was reportedly the Gold Apollo AP-900 alphanumeric pager, which runs on two AAA batteries, or the Gold Apollo AR-924, which has a lithium-ion battery. The company is based in Taiwan.

Theoretically, both batteries could be made to explode, but as mentioned above, the force of such an explosion would not do the kind of damage that has been done, say experts.

Therefore, it is being believed that the pagers were already tampered with during their manufacture or in transit. A former British Army munitions expert told the BBC the pagers could have been packed with 10 to 20 grams of military-grade explosives, hidden inside a fake electronic component. All it would require to explode then is an alphanumeric text message as the “signal”.

If this was indeed the case, such an operation would have required years of planning, a huge operation, involving operatives on the supplier and distribution side and the procurement side. The latter essentially means a mole within the Hezbollah.

Why is Israel the likely suspect?

It is precisely because of the magnitude of the attack and the skill required to pull it off that fingers were immediately pointed at Israel and its powerful spy agency Mossad.

Both Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Hezbollah have blamed Israel. In a statement, Hezbollah said, “This treacherous and criminal enemy will certainly receive its just punishment for this sinful aggression, whether it expects it or not.”

Besides, Israel is not new to pulling off similar attacks. Even before Yahya Ayyash’s assassination in 1996, Mossad operatives in 1972 eliminated Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) operative Mahmoud Hamshari in a similar fashion.

As part of their revenge plan for the killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, Mossad operatives rigged the phone used by Hamshari in his apartment in Paris. When he answered the phone on December 8, Mossad operatives keeping watch remotely detonated the explosives packed inside the phone. Hamshari lost a leg in the blast and later died.

Also in 1972, Bassam Abu Sharif, spokesperson for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was grievously injured by a book-bomb planted by Mossad in Beirut. He survived with several severed fingers, and was left deaf in one ear and blind in one eye.

In 2020, Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated in Iran by a remote-controlled machine gun mounted on a car.

There is no other power in the Middle East region that can execute such high-tech coordinated attacks.

What now?

The pager attack is definitely a huge defeat and deeply embarrassing for the Hezbollah that prides itself on its security measures. The presence of a mole raises worries about how deeply Israel may have infiltrated its communications network.

Some experts point out that the synchronised blasts could be a precursor to a broader attack and the target may have been simply to disrupt Hezbollah’s communications networks and divert its attention.

Also, despite exchange of fire and rockets between Hezbollah and Israel since last October, when the Gaza war started, a bigger-scale war has not broken out in the region. However, now the situation may spiral out of control, fear observers.