While many questions remain about the simultaneous explosion of thousands of pagers belonging to Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite party, in Gaza, Lebanon and even Syria on Tuesday 17 September, the precise manner in which this unprecedented attack could have been carried out remains unclear. Here is a summary of the main known elements.
It’s not a hack, it’s an explosive.
Nearly 24 hours after the explosion of pagers used by Hezbollah operatives and fighters that left nine dead and more than 2,800 wounded, a consensus is emerging among experts on how this unprecedented attack was orchestrated: it was not a “simple” hack aimed at overheating the batteries of these rudimentary devices, but certainly a so-called “supply chain attack” operation. It allowed a few grams of a powerful explosive to be inserted into pagers destined for Hezbollah, transforming the communication devices into bombs.
The explosions filmed, in particular in Lebanon, as well as the injuries of the victims, show that the explosions were relatively powerful. However, although in exceptional circumstances batteries can explode if they overheat, the resulting detonations are of low intensity. Olivier Simon, technical director of DXOmark and battery expert, confirms this. World that “The probability that these are explosives seems very high. An exploding battery normally releases flames. But in the videos we don’t see any appearing.”US and other security sources have confirmed to several media outlets that explosives were placed in pagers and detonated remotely by Israel.
“Clearly, it is an explosion, not a battery explosion, in the sense of a “lithium explosion””estimates with the World Former member of the French intelligence services. “That means the batteries were modified, with ten to twenty grams of explosive, something like that.”
Israel, which Hezbollah has directly accused, had not yet officially reacted on Wednesday morning. But the high technical level of the operation, necessarily the work of one or more highly advanced intelligence services, the timing of the attack and the nature of the target leave little doubt about Israeli involvement. There are precedents, on a much more limited scale: in 1996, Yahya Ayyash, considered Hamas’s main attacker, was killed by the explosion of his mobile phone, in which 15 grams of RDX, a powerful explosive, had been inserted. The attack was attributed to the Shin Beth, Israel’s national intelligence service.
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