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.



Hamas Weakened, Not Crushed a Year into War with Israel

People search for survivors and the bodies of victims through the rubble of buildings destroyed during Israeli bombardment, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 26, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
People search for survivors and the bodies of victims through the rubble of buildings destroyed during Israeli bombardment, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 26, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
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Hamas Weakened, Not Crushed a Year into War with Israel

People search for survivors and the bodies of victims through the rubble of buildings destroyed during Israeli bombardment, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 26, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
People search for survivors and the bodies of victims through the rubble of buildings destroyed during Israeli bombardment, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 26, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)

Israel's military campaign to eradicate Hamas in retaliation for the October 7 attack has weakened it by killing several of its leaders and thousands of fighters, and by reducing swaths of the territory it rules to rubble.

But the Palestinian armed group has not been crushed outright, and a year on from its unprecedented attack on Israel, an end to its hold over Gaza remains elusive.

Hamas sparked the Gaza war by sending hundreds of fighters across the border into Israel on October 7, 2023, to attack communities in the south.

The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which include hostages killed in captivity.

Vowing to crush Hamas and bring the hostages home, Israel launched a military campaign in the Gaza Strip from the land, sea and air.

According to data provided by the health ministry of Hamas-run Gaza, the war has killed more than 41,000 people, the majority civilians. The United Nations has acknowledged these figures to be reliable.

- Dead leader -

In one of the biggest blows to the movement since it was founded in 1987 during the Palestinian intifada uprising, Hamas's leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran on July 31.

Both Hamas and its backer Iran accused Israel of killing Haniyeh, though Israel has not commented.

After Haniyeh's death, Hamas named Yahya Sinwar, whom Israel accuses of masterminding the October 7 attack, as its new leader.

On the Gaza battlefield, Israeli forces have aggressively pursued both Sinwar and Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, whom Israel says it killed in an air strike.

Hamas says Deif is still alive.

"Commander Mohammed Deif is still giving orders," a source in Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, told AFP on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to media on the matter.

- 'Number one target' -

A senior Hamas official who also asked not to be named described Sinwar, who has not been seen in public since the start of the war, as a "supreme commander" who leads "both the military and political wings" of Hamas.

"A team is dedicated to his security because he is the enemy's number one target," the official said.

In August, Israeli officials reported the dead in Gaza included more than 17,000 Palestinian fighters.

A senior Hamas official acknowledged that "several thousand fighters from the movement and other resistance groups died in combat".

Despite its huge losses, the source in the group's armed wing still gloated over the intelligence and security failure that the October 7 attack was for Israel.

"It claims to know everything but on October 7 the enemy saw nothing," he said.

Israel has its own reading of where Hamas now stands.

In September, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Hamas "as a military formation no longer exists".

Bruce Hoffman, a researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Israel's offensive has dealt a "grievous but not a crushing blow" to Hamas.

- 'Political suicide' -

Hamas has controlled Gaza and run its institutions single-handedly since 2007, after winning a legislative election a year earlier and defeating its Palestinian rivals Fatah in street battles.

Now, most of Gaza's institutions have either been damaged or destroyed.

Israel accuses Hamas of using schools, health facilities and other civilian infrastructure to conduct operations, a claim Hamas denies.

The war has left no part of Gaza safe from bombardment: schools turned into shelters for the displaced have been hit, as have healthcare facilities.

Hundreds of thousands of children have not gone to school in nearly a year, while universities, power plants, water pumping stations and police stations are no longer operational.

By mid-2024, Gaza's economy had been reduced to a "less than one-sixth of its 2022 level," according to a UN report that said it would take "decades to bring Gaza back" to its pre-October 7 state.

The collapse has fueled widespread discontent among Gaza's 2.4 million people, two-thirds of whom were already poor before the war, according to Mukhaimer Abu Saada, a political researcher at Al-Azhar University in Cairo.

"The criticism is harsh," he told AFP.

His colleague Jamal al-Fadi branded the October 7 attack as "political suicide for Hamas", which has now "found itself isolated".

Hamas political bureau member Bassem Naim dismissed the assessment.

"While some may not agree with Hamas's political views, the resistance and its project continue to enjoy widespread support," said Naim, who like several other self-exiled Hamas leaders lives in Qatar.