Gaza war enters digital phase as pagers blast Hezbollah operatives
Sopuruchi Onwuka, with agency reports
Over nine people were killed and over 2,800 people injured yesterday in simultaneous pager blasts that hit militants and managers of the Hezbollah terrorist groups in Lebanon and Syria.
The attacks which seemingly targeted militants that fight Israel in the ongoing Gaza conflict exposed Iranian ambassador to Lebanon as Hezbollah operative following explosion of his own pager.
According to reports reviewed by The Oracle Today, Hezbollah has accused Israel of carrying out the attack and vowed to retaliate.
It was reported that pagers belonging to members of the Iran-backed militant group exploded almost simultaneously, exposing a massive security breach and demonstrating the scale of Israeli intelligence.
Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said at least 170 people are in a critical condition.
Iran’s Ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was among those wounded in Beirut, along with two embassy employees, according to Iranian state media. Amani has a superficial injury and is under observation in the hospital, state media IRNA reported, citing his wife.
The unprecedented attack underscores Hezbollah’s vulnerability as its communication network was compromised to deadly effect and follows a series of targeted assassinations against its commanders.
Israel has neither taken responsibility nor denied the digital assault, but war analysts link the nature of the explosions to a pattern of discrete operation known with Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad, and the Israeli military.
While the Israeli military has said it will not comment on the explosions, both Lebanon and Hezbollah have blamed it for the attack. Iran also blamed what it referred to as “Israeli terrorism.”
A New York Times report cited US and other officials as saying that Israel hid explosives inside a batch of pagers ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo and destined for Hezbollah.
A switch was embedded to detonate them remotely, it added.
Gold Apollo’s founder and chairperson, Hsu Ching-kuang, told reporters Wednesday that the pagers used in the attack were made by a European distributor. He said his firm had signed a contract with the distributor to use the Gold Apollo brand.
Gold Apollo’s founder and chairperson, Hsu Ching-kuang
Hezbollah militant group said Tuesday evening that “workers” in various Hezbollah institutions were affected by the explosions, with a “large number” of people injured.
Hezbollah has long touted secrecy as a cornerstone of its military strategy, forgoing high-tech devices to avoid infiltration from Israeli and US spyware.
Unlike other non-state actors in the Middle East, Hezbollah units are believed to communicate through an internal communications network. This is considered one of the key building blocks of the powerful group that has long been accused of operating as a state-within-a-state.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati slammed the attack in a cabinet meeting Tuesday as “a serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty and a crime by all standards.”
The Israeli military, which has engaged in tit-for-tat strikes with Hezbollah since the start of the war in Gaza last October, said in a statement following the explosions that it had no change in its advice to Israeli civilians.
“The public are asked to remain alert and vigilant, and any change in policy will be updated immediately,” it said in a statement.
The wave of explosions affected several areas in Lebanon, particularly the southern suburbs of Beirut, according to Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces.
In a statement, Gold Apollo said the company that produces and sells the AR924 pager model is Hungary-based BAC Consulting KFT.
Taiwan has no record of Gold Apollo pagers being shipped to Lebanon or the Middle East, a senior Taiwanese security official said on Wednesday. Gold Apollo shipped about 260,000 pagers from Taiwan from January 2022 to August 2024, mostly to the United States and Australia, the official said.
Lebanese officials have urged citizens with pagers to discard them, warned hospitals to be on “high alert,” and asked health workers to urgently report to work to assist with the “large number of injured people.”
The explosions come after Israel’s security cabinet voted Monday to add another war objective to its ongoing conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah: ensuring the safe return of residents from communities along its border with Lebanon to their homes.
“Israel will continue to act to implement this objective,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Monday.
After nearly a year of cross-border exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel, tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes in southern Lebanon and northern Israel.
The US was “not involved” in the series of pager explosions in Lebanon and was “not aware” of any attack in advance, according to a State Department spokesperson.
Following the attacks, European airlines Air France and Lufthansa suspended flights to Tel Aviv at least through Thursday “due to the security situation locally.”
Air France said it is also suspending flights to Beirut through Thursday, amid fears of escalation in the region.
