What to Know about the Deadly Pager Explosions Targeting Hezbollah 

Paramedics transport an injured person to the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) after an incident involving Hezbollah members' wireless devices in Beirut, Lebanon, 17 September 2024. (EPA)
Paramedics transport an injured person to the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) after an incident involving Hezbollah members' wireless devices in Beirut, Lebanon, 17 September 2024. (EPA)
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What to Know about the Deadly Pager Explosions Targeting Hezbollah 

Paramedics transport an injured person to the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) after an incident involving Hezbollah members' wireless devices in Beirut, Lebanon, 17 September 2024. (EPA)
Paramedics transport an injured person to the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) after an incident involving Hezbollah members' wireless devices in Beirut, Lebanon, 17 September 2024. (EPA)

In what appears to be a sophisticated, remote attack, pagers used by hundreds of members of Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria Tuesday, killing at least nine people — including an 8-year-old girl — and wounding thousands more.

A US official said Israel briefed the US on the operation — in which small amounts of explosive hidden in the pagers were detonated — on Tuesday after it was concluded. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the information publicly.

The Iran-backed group blamed Israel for the deadly explosions, which targeted an extraordinary breadth of people and showed signs of being a long-planned operation. Details on how the attack was executed are largely uncertain and investigators have not immediately said how the pagers were detonated. The Israeli military has declined to comment.

Here's what we know so far.

Why were pagers used in the attack? Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah previously warned the group’s members not to carry cellphones, saying they could be used by Israel to track the group's movements. As a result, the organization uses pagers to communicate.

A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the exploded devices were from a new brand the group had not used before. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press, did not identify the brand name or supplier.

Taiwanese company Gold Apollo said Wednesday it had authorized use of its brand on the AR-924 pager model and a Budapest, Hungary-based company called BAC Consulting produced and sold the pagers. Further information on BAC wasn't immediately available.

Nicholas Reese, adjunct instructor at the Center for Global Affairs in New York University’s School of Professional Studies, said smart phones carry a higher risk for intercepted communications in contrast to the simpler technology of pagers.

This type of attack will also force Hezbollah to change their communication strategies, said Reese, who previously worked as an intelligence officer, adding that survivors of Tuesday's explosions are likely to throw away "not just their pagers, but their phones, and leaving their tablets or any other electronic devices."

How could sabotage cause these pagers to explode? Even with a US official confirming it was a planned operation by Israel, multiple theories have emerged Tuesday around how the attack might have been carried out. Several experts who spoke with The Associated Press explained how the explosions were most likely the result of supply-chain interference.

Very small explosive devices may have been built into the pagers prior to their delivery to Hezbollah, and then all remotely triggered simultaneously, possibly with a radio signal.

By the time of the attack, "the battery was probably half-explosive and half-actual battery," said Carlos Perez, director of security intelligence at TrustedSec.

A former British Army bomb disposal officer explained that an explosive device has five main components: A container, a battery, a triggering device, a detonator and an explosive charge.

"A pager has three of those already," said the ex-officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he now works as a consultant with clients in the Middle East. "You would only need to add the detonator and the charge."

After security camera footage appeared on social media Tuesday purporting to show one of the pagers exploding on a man’s hip in a Lebanese market, two munitions experts offered opinions that corroborate the US official's statement that the blast appeared to be the result of a tiny explosive device.

"Looking at the video, the size of the detonation is similar to that caused by an electric detonator alone or one that incorporates an extremely small, high-explosive charge," said Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordinance disposal expert.

This signals involvement of a state actor, Moorhouse said. He adds that Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, is the most obvious suspect to have the resources to carry out such an attack.

N.R. Jenzen-Jones, an expert in military arms who is director of the Australian-based Armament Research Services, notes that Israel had been accused of carrying out similar operations in the past. Last year, AP reported that Iran accused Israel of trying to sabotage its ballistic missile program through faulty foreign parts that could explode, damaging or destroying the weapons before they could be used.

How long was this operation? It would take a long time to plan an attack of this scale. The exact specifics are still unknown, but experts who spoke with the AP shared estimates ranging anywhere between several months to two years.

The sophistication of the attack suggests that the culprit has been collecting intelligence for a long time, Reese said. An attack of this caliber requires building the relationships needed to gain physical access to the pagers before they were sold; developing the technology that would be embedded in the devices; and developing sources who can confirm that the targets were carrying the pagers.

And it's likely the compromised pagers seemed normal to their users for some time before the attack. Elijah J. Magnier, a Brussels-based veteran and a senior political risk analyst with over 37 years experience in the region, said he has had conversations with members of Hezbollah and survivors of Tuesday's pager attack. He said the pagers were procured more than six months ago.

"The pagers functioned perfectly for six months," Magnier said. What triggered the explosion, he said, appeared to be an error message sent to all the devices.

Based on his conversations with Hezbollah members, Magnier also said that many pagers didn’t go off, allowing the group to inspect them. They came to the conclusion that between 3 to 5 grams of a highly explosive material were concealed or embedded in the circuitry, he said.

Jenzen-Jones also adds that "such a large-scale operation also raises questions of targeting" — stressing the number of causalities and enormous impact reported so far.

"How can the party initiating the explosive be sure that a target’s child, for example, is not playing with the pager at the time it functions?" he said.

Hezbollah issued a statement confirming at least two members were killed in the bombings. One of them was the son of a Hezbollah member in parliament, according to the Hezbollah official who spoke anonymously. The group later issued announcements that six other members were killed Tuesday, though it did not specify how.

"We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression that also targeted civilians," Hezbollah said, adding that Israel will "for sure get its just punishment."



Report: Arms Producers Saw Revenue up in 2023 with the Wars in Ukraine, Gaza

GROT C16 FB-M1, modular assault rifles system is seen at PGZ (Polska Grupa Zbrojna) arms factory Fabryka Broni Lucznikin Radom Poland, November 7, 2022. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel
GROT C16 FB-M1, modular assault rifles system is seen at PGZ (Polska Grupa Zbrojna) arms factory Fabryka Broni Lucznikin Radom Poland, November 7, 2022. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel
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Report: Arms Producers Saw Revenue up in 2023 with the Wars in Ukraine, Gaza

GROT C16 FB-M1, modular assault rifles system is seen at PGZ (Polska Grupa Zbrojna) arms factory Fabryka Broni Lucznikin Radom Poland, November 7, 2022. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel
GROT C16 FB-M1, modular assault rifles system is seen at PGZ (Polska Grupa Zbrojna) arms factory Fabryka Broni Lucznikin Radom Poland, November 7, 2022. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

Major companies in the arms industry saw a 4.2% increase in overall revenue in 2023 with sharp rises for producers based in Russia and the Middle East, a new report said Monday.

The report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI, said revenues from the top 100 arms companies totaled $632 billion last year in response to surging demand related to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

It said that “smaller producers were more efficient at responding to new demand."

By contrast, some major companies such as US-based Lockheed Martin Corp. and RTX that were involved in complex, long-term contacts registered a drop in earnings, according to The AP.

The 41 US-based arms companies among the world's top 100 saw revenues of $317 billion, a 2.5% increase from 2022, the report said.

Since 2018, the world's top five companies in the industry are Lockheed Martin Corp., RTX, Northrop Grumman Corp., Boeing and General Dynamics Corp.

Six arms companies based in the Middle East and in the world's top 100 saw their combined revenues grow by 18%, to a total of $19.6 billion.

“With the outbreak of war in Gaza, the arms revenues of the three companies based in Israel in the top 100 reached $13.6 billion,” the highest figure ever recorded by Israeli companies in the SIPRI reports, the institute said.

The slowest revenue growth in 2023 was in the European arms industry, excluding Russia. Revenue totaled $133 billion or 0.2% more than in 2022, as most producers were working on older, long-term contracts.

But smaller companies in Europe were able to quickly tap into the demand related to Russia's war against Ukraine.

Russia's top two arms companies saw their combined revenues increase by 40%, to an estimated $25.5 billion.

“This was almost entirely due to the 49% increase in arms revenues recorded by Rostec, a state-owned holding company controlling many arms producers,” the SIPRI report said.