Israel behind deadly pager explosions that targeted Hezbollah and injured thousands in Lebanon

By Charbel Mallo, Tamara Qiblawi, Jeremy Diamond, Lauren Kent, Rob Picheta and Christian Edwards and Helen Regan, CNN

(CNN) — Hezbollah has vowed to respond to an Israeli attack that killed multiple people and injured thousands across Lebanon on Tuesday when 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.

A child was among at least nine killed in the blasts, which wounded about 2,800 people, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said. At least 170 people are in a critical condition, he said, though the nature of the other injuries is unclear.

The attack underscores Hezbollah’s vulnerability as its communication network was compromised to deadly effect and follows a series of targeted assassinations against its commanders.

Meanwhile, dozens of walkie talkies exploded in Lebanon on Wednesday, leaving at least one person dead and more than 100 injured, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry, which said the affected devices belonged to Hamas members.

The incidents risk further escalating tensions in the Middle East already heightened over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

CNN has learned Tuesday’s explosions were the result of a joint operation between 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.”

Speculation has mounted over how low-tech wireless communication devices could have been exploited. The New York Times reported Tuesday 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 told reporters Wednesday that the pagers used in the attack were made by a European distributor. Hsu Ching-kuang said his firm had signed a contract with the distributor to use the Gold Apollo brand.

Videos circulating on social media and news agencies appear to show powerful explosions in locations across Lebanon. In one CCTV video, a man is seen picking out fruit in a supermarket when an explosion tears his bag to shreds. Bystanders run after hearing the blast, while the man drops to the ground clutching his lower abdomen. After several seconds, he can be heard groaning in pain.

Other social media videos showed large numbers of injured people, including at least one child. Those wounded were covered in blood, many with facial and hand injuries.

“This criminal and treacherous enemy will definitely receive a fair punishment for this sinful assault, both in ways that are expected and unexpected,” Hezbollah said Tuesday evening.

It later said that its operations against Israel would continue and vowed “hard atonement awaiting the criminal enemy for the massacre it committed Tuesday.”

The militant group had earlier confirmed on its Telegram channel 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.

Iran’s Ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was among those wounded in Beirut Tuesday, 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.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati slammed Tuesday’sattack as “a serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty and a crime by all standards” in a cabinet meeting Tuesday, according to the state-run NNA news outlet.

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 pagerexplosions 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.

Explosives placed in pagers

The wave of explosions affected several areas in Lebanon, particularly the southern suburbs of Beirut, according to Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces.

NNA reported that “hacked” pager devices exploded in the towns of Ali Al-Nahri and Riyaq in the central Beqaa valley, resulting in a significant number of injuries. The locations are Hezbollah strongholds.

Israel placed explosive material in a batch of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon and destined for Hezbollah, The New York Times reported, citing American and other officials briefed on the operation.

The explosives were planted next to the battery in each pager, and a switch embedded to detonate them remotely, according to The New York Times.

CNN previously reported that the pagers that exploded had been purchased by Hezbollah in recent months, according to a Lebanese security source. The devices detonated simultaneously after receiving a message on Tuesday afternoon.

Multiple photos from Lebanon on social media appear to show damaged Gold Apollo pagers. CNN cannot geolocate the images from social media but has verified they were published on Tuesday, the same day as the explosions. At least one pager shown in the images was a Gold Apollo AR924 model.

Eyewitnesses described the carnage in Beirut following the blasts.

“We were surprised that there were a lot of people … there was blood on the roads and people were being transported in ambulances to the hospital. But we did not know what was happening,” said one witness, who did not want to be named for safety reasons.

The witness told CNN he went to a hospital to visit a friend who had been carrying one of the pagers when it exploded.

“This device was not only in the hands of people who belong to [Hezbollah], but in the hands of all people. There were people working in the security field who were using that device and they were also hurt,” he said.

David Kennedy, a former US National Security Agency intelligence analyst, told CNN the explosions seen in videos shared online appear to be “too large for this to be a remote and direct hack that would overload the pager and cause a lithium battery explosion.”

“It’s more likely that Israel had human operatives… in Hezbollah… The pagers would have been implanted with explosives and likely only to detonate when a certain message was received,” he said.

“The complexity needed to pull this off is incredible. It would have required many different intelligence components and execution. Human intelligence (HUMINT) would be the main method used to pull this off, along with intercepting the supply chain in order to make modifications to the pagers.”

Kim Ghattas, a Lebanese journalist and contributing writer to The Atlantic magazine, told CNN that Hezbollah had recently “gone low tech” in an attempt to prevent more of its operatives from being assassinated. In a February speech, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah called on his fighters to discard their mobile phones, saying, “shut it off, bury it, put it in an iron chest and lock it up.”

Pagers made by European distributor

More details emerged Wednesday of how Israeli intelligence may possibly have engineered the unprecedented attack.

Hsu, the founder of pager manufacturer Gold Apollo, said its European distributor established a relationship with the Taiwanese firm about three years ago.

At first, the European company only imported Gold Apollo’s pager and communication products, he said. Later, the company told Gold Apollo they wished to make their own pager and asked for the right to use the Taiwanese firm’s brand, he said.

Hsu said Gold Apollo had encountered at least one anomaly in its dealings with the distributor, citing a wire transfer that took a long time to clear.

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 told CNN 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.

This story has been updated with additional developments

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Eric Cheung, Wayne Chang, Sarah El Sirgany, Pauline Lockwood and Hamdi Alkhshali contributed reporting.