Update: Vlad sends this:
Earlier today (in the middle of the afternoon, Beirut time) more than a thousand pagers exploded simultaneously on or near the persons of members of the Shi’ite terrorist group Hezbollah. At least nine people were killed, and more than two thousand wounded. Interestingly enough, the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon was among the wounded, but Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah escaped unscathed. Most of the explosions occurred in Lebanon, but there are reports that several went off in Syria.
Hezbollah operatives had recently abandoned their cell phones because they had been penetrated by Israeli intelligence. They reverted to using the relatively antique technology of pagers instead, but now any pagers that didn’t explode have been discarded, leaving the Hezbollah networks more or less incommunicado.
It’s astonishing that Israel was able to hack all those devices and cause them to explode simultaneously. I have no idea how a pager can be induced to explode remotely.
I say “Israel”, but I don’t really know that the Jewish State was responsible. No one does, because there has been no official comment by the Israeli government. But who else has the capability to pull off a caper like this one?
To keep up with the latest updates on the aftermath of the incident, see this live blog from The Times of Israel. There’s also an article in The Jerusalem Post.
Below are two videos with some interesting information on the day’s events.
From The Sun:
From WION:
If any significant new information comes in, I’ll post an update.
Hat tip: Power Line.
As of 5:00 PM Eastern Time on 09/17/2024
Times of Israel reports:
11 Dead
500 blinded
Over 3,000 wounded
How it was done and who did it from same source:
“Sky News Arabia quoted sources saying that the Mossad spy agency got hold of Hezbollah’s communication devices before they were handed over to the terror group.
The Israeli spy agency placed a quantity of PETN, a highly explosive material, on the batteries of the devices, and detonated them by raising the temperature of the batteries from afar, the source said.
A Lebanese security source quoted by Al Jazeera said an explosive weighing less than 20 grams had been placed in each pager.”
The ‘hack’ in this case was probably literally hacking them open (well, more subtly than that obviously) and adding some plastic explosive. Kinda like the old CIA trick of spicing up intercepted arms shipments with ammo that had TNT instead of gunpowder before sending it on to the intended recipient.