What We Know about the Deadly Pager Blasts in Lebanon 

A man's bag explodes in a supermarket in Beirut, Lebanon September 17, 2024 in this screen grab from a video obtained from social media. (Social media/via Reuters)
A man's bag explodes in a supermarket in Beirut, Lebanon September 17, 2024 in this screen grab from a video obtained from social media. (Social media/via Reuters)
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What We Know about the Deadly Pager Blasts in Lebanon 

A man's bag explodes in a supermarket in Beirut, Lebanon September 17, 2024 in this screen grab from a video obtained from social media. (Social media/via Reuters)
A man's bag explodes in a supermarket in Beirut, Lebanon September 17, 2024 in this screen grab from a video obtained from social media. (Social media/via Reuters)

At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members - including fighters and medics - detonated simultaneously across Lebanon.

Here's what we know so far about the pager blasts.

WHEN AND WHERE DID THE BLASTS TAKE PLACE?

The detonations started around 3:30 p.m. (1230 GMT) in the southern suburbs of Beirut known as Dahiyeh and the eastern Bekaa valley - strongholds of the anti-Israel armed group Hezbollah.

They lasted around an hour, with Reuters witnesses and residents of Dahiyeh saying they could still hear explosions at 4:30 p.m. (1730 GMT).

According to security sources and footage reviewed by Reuters, some of the detonations took place after the pagers rang, causing the fighters to put their hands on them or bring them up to their faces to check the screens.

HOW BIG WERE THE EXPLOSIONS?

The blasts were relatively contained, according to footage reviewed by Reuters. In two separate clips from closed-circuit video of supermarkets, the blasts appeared only to wound the person wearing the pager or closest to it.

Video from hospitals and shared on social media appeared to show individuals with injuries to their faces, missing fingers and gaping wounds at the hip where the pager was likely worn.

The blasts did not appear to cause major damage to buildings or start any fires.

WHAT TYPE OF PAGER EXPLODED?

Israel's Mossad spy agency planted a small amount of explosives inside 5,000 Taiwan-made pagers ordered by Lebanese group Hezbollah months before Tuesday's detonations, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.

The Lebanese source said the group had ordered pagers made by Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, which several sources say were brought into the country earlier this year. The source identified a photograph of the model of the pager, an AP924.

Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo, a Taiwan-based pager manufacturer.

Hezbollah did not reply to questions from Reuters on the make of the pagers. Gold Apollo's founder said the company did not make the pagers used in the explosions in Lebanon. They were manufactured by a company in Europe that had the right to use the Taiwanese firm's brand.

Hezbollah fighters began using pagers in the belief they would be able to evade Israeli tracking of their locations, two sources familiar with the group's operations told Reuters this year.

Three security sources told Reuters that the pagers that detonated were the latest model brought in by Hezbollah in recent months.

WHAT CAUSED THE PAGERS TO EXPLODE?

Iran-backed Hezbollah said it was carrying out a "security and scientific investigation" into the causes of the blasts and said Israel would receive "its fair punishment."

Diplomatic and security sources speculated that the explosions could have been caused by the devices' batteries detonating, possibly through overheating.

But others said that Israel might have infiltrated the supply chain for Hezbollah's pagers. The New York Times reported that Israel hid explosive material within a new batch of the pagers before they were imported to Lebanon, citing American and other officials briefed on the operation.

Several experts who spoke with Reuters said they doubted the battery alone would have been enough to cause the blasts.

Paul Christensen, an expert in lithium ion battery safety at Newcastle University, said the damage seemed inconsistent with past cases of such batteries failing.

"What we're talking about is a relatively small battery bursting into flames. We're not talking of a fatal explosion here...my intuition is telling me that it's highly unlikely," he said.

Another reason to doubt the explosions were caused by overheating batteries is that typically only a fully charged battery can catch fire or explode, said Ofodike Ezekoye, a University of Texas at Austin mechanical engineering professor.

"Below 50% (charge)...it will generate gases and vapor, but no fires or explosions. It is highly unlikely that everyone whose pager failed had a fully charged battery," he said.

Israeli intelligence forces have previously placed explosives in personal phones to target enemies, according to the 2018 book "Rise and Kill First". Hackers have also demonstrated the ability to inject malicious code into personal devices, causing them to overheat and explode in some instances.

WHAT HAVE THE AUTHORITIES SAID?

Lebanon's foreign ministry called the explosions an "Israeli cyberattack," but did not provide details on how it had reached that conclusion.

Lebanon's information minister said the attack was an assault on Lebanon's sovereignty.

Israel's military declined to respond to Reuters questions on the pager blasts.

The US State Department said Washington was gathering information and was not involved. The Pentagon said there was no change in US force posture in the Middle East in the wake of the incident.

WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR THE ISRAEL-HEZBOLLAH CONFLICT?

Analysts see the threat of escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, which have exchanged cross-border fire since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza last October.

But experts are more skeptical, for now, about the potential for triggering an imminent all-out Israel-Hezbollah war, which the US has sought to prevent and which it believes neither side wants.

Matthew Levitt, former deputy director of the US Treasury's intelligence office and author of a book on Hezbollah, said the pager explosions could disrupt its operations for some time.

Jonathan Panikoff, the US government's former deputy national intelligence officer on the Middle East, said Hezbollah might downplay its "biggest counterintelligence failure in decades" but rising tensions could eventually erupt into full-scale war if diplomacy continues to fall short.



Gazans Struggle to Imagine Post-war Recovery

Palestinians search for survivors amid the rubble of a building, which collapsed after Israeli bombardment on a building adjacent to it, in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City on September 23, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas group. (AFP)
Palestinians search for survivors amid the rubble of a building, which collapsed after Israeli bombardment on a building adjacent to it, in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City on September 23, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas group. (AFP)
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Gazans Struggle to Imagine Post-war Recovery

Palestinians search for survivors amid the rubble of a building, which collapsed after Israeli bombardment on a building adjacent to it, in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City on September 23, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas group. (AFP)
Palestinians search for survivors amid the rubble of a building, which collapsed after Israeli bombardment on a building adjacent to it, in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City on September 23, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas group. (AFP)

The sheer scale of destruction from the deadliest war in Gaza's history has made the road to recovery difficult to imagine, especially for people who had already lost their homes during previous conflicts.

After an Israeli strike levelled his family home in Gaza City in 2014, 37-year-old Mohammed Abu Sharia made good on his pledge to return to the same plot within less than a year.

The process was not perfect: the grant they received paid for only two floors instead of the original four.

But they happily called it home until it came under aerial assault again last October, following Hamas's attack on southern Israel.

This time, the family could not flee in time and five people were killed, four of them children.

The rest remain displaced nearly a year later, scattered across Gaza and in neighboring Egypt.

"A person puts all his life's hard work into building a house, and suddenly it becomes a mirage," Abu Sharia told AFP.

"If the war stops, we will build again in the same place because we have nothing else."

With bombs still raining down on Gaza, many of the Palestinian territory's 2.4 million people will face the same challenge as Abu Sharia: how to summon the resources and energy necessary for another round of rebuilding.

"The pessimism is coming from bad experiences with reconstruction in the past, and the different scale of this current destruction," said Ghassan Khatib, a former planning minister.

That has not stopped people from trying to plan ahead.

Some focus on the immediate challenges of removing rubble and getting their children back in school after nearly a year of suspended classes.

Others dream of loftier projects: building a port, a Palestinian film industry, or even recruiting a globally competitive football team.

But with no ceasefire in sight, analysts say most long-term planning is premature.

"It's sort of like putting icing on a cake that's not yet fully baked," said Brian Katulis of the Middle East Institute in Washington.

It could take 80 years to rebuild some 79,000 destroyed homes, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to housing said in May.

A UN report in July said workers could need 15 years just to clear the rubble.

The slow responses to past Gaza wars in 2008-9, 2012, 2014 and 2021 give little reason for confidence that rebounding from this one will be any smoother, said Omar Shaban, founder of the Gaza-based think tank PalThink for Strategic Studies.

The Israeli blockade of Gaza, imposed after Hamas took control of the territory in 2007, remains firmly in place, sharply restricting access to building materials.

"People are fed up," Shaban said.

"They lost their faith even before the war."

Despite the hopelessness, Shaban is among those putting forward more imaginative strategies for Gaza's postwar future.

Earlier this year he published an article suggesting initial reconstruction work could focus on 10 neighborhoods -– one inside and one outside refugee camps in each of Gaza's five governorates.

The idea would be to ensure the benefits of reconstruction are seen across the besieged territory, he told AFP.

"I want to create hope. People need to realize that their suffering is going to end" even if not right away, he said.

"Otherwise they will become radical."

Hope is also a major theme of Palestine Emerging, an initiative that has suggested building a port on an artificial island made of war debris, a technical university for reconstruction, and a Gaza-West Bank transportation corridor.

Other proposals have included launching a tourism campaign, building a Palestinian film industry, and recruiting a football squad.

"Maybe when you look on some of these, you would think they are, you know, dreams or something," Palestine Emerging executive director Shireen Shelleh said from her office in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

"However, I believe if you don't dream then you cannot achieve anything. So even if some people might find it ambitious or whatever, in my opinion that's a good thing."

Khatib, the former planning minister, said it was not the time for such proposals.

"I think people should be more realistic," he said.

"The urgent aspects are medicine, food, shelter, schools."